Minister for improving data quality to enhance its usefulness

New Delhi, Sep 25 (UNI) Union Minister for Statistics and Programme Implementation, G K Vasan today said efforts should be intensified for improvin the quality of data to enhance its usefulness at the grass-root level of administration.

Inaugurating a two-day seminar on the results of 62nd round of National Statistical Survey, the Minister said regular research, seminars and public debate should be undertaken for this purpose.

With planning decentralised to the district-levels, demands for sub State-level information was on an increase and the States as well as local self governments were more interested in planning at district-levels.

He said the information collected from the age group of 15 years in rural areas had revealed interesting aspects like about 56 per cent men and 31 per cent of rural women formed the labour force compared to their urban counterparts, who had 57 per cent men and 15 per cent women respectively.

The rural unemployment was two per cent as against urban unemployment rate of five per cent. In rural areas, more than half of the usually employed were self-employed.

The percentage of regular wage/salaried employees was relatively lower among women as compared to men in both rural and urban India, he said.

The proportion of women casual labourers was about one per cent point higher than that of men casual labourers in both rural and urban areas.

UNI MCN LPB MIR NS1837