NSSO’s million-dollar problem: How to get affluent Indians living in gated societies to respond to their surveys

The National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) is faced with a strange situation, which has turned into a tricky issue for statisticians and policymakers. High income, urban Indians, often living in elite addresses and gated societies are often not cooperating in surveys and declining to provide information.

This lack of cooperation is a major stumbling block, which distorts the statistical sample for conducting household surveys and in turn impacts policymaking and decisions.

“Decision making needs to be data based. Policy needs to be evidence based, and if we don’t have the correct data, if we don’t have the right evidence then perhaps the policies or the decisions that are taken may also reflect the skewed data. Household surveys form a very important part of the data that is collected,” said Saurabh Garg, Secretary Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation on Friday at a brainstorming session on the issue, which was organised by the NSSO and MoSPI. It was also attended by top officials of the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) and representatives from Residents Welfare Associations (RWAs) and gated societies.

He noted that there are several concerns about data privacy when it comes to providing information to field officers of the NSSO but underlined that this data remains anonymous. He also said that the ministry is undertaking a number of reforms to ensure that there is no survey fatigue in terms of the time taken for these interviews.

“There are a number of reforms that we are undertaking in the ministry of statistics, and some of them include how to ensure that there is no fatigue in terms of the survey time,” he said, adding that this is being done by breaking the data collection into one or two sessions, using technology for computer-aided personal interviews instead of paper-based surveys and improving representativeness of these surveys.

The NSSO collects data through household surveys for several statistical exercises including the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES), Periodic Labour Force Survey, Employment and Unemployment Survey, Debt and Investment Survey, Time Use Survey as well as surveys on health, education, disability, migration, tourism, and AYUSH.

Findings of these surveys are then used for various other statistical and policy decisions. For instance, the data from the HCES will be used to update the consumer price index basket that is used to measure retail inflation. The Reserve Bank of India uses the retail inflation data to take a decision on monetary policy and rates, noted Garg.

Officials highlighted that the lack of cooperation from high income households, living in gated communities or elite areas, has increased over the years. The non response rate in rural areas by the rich increased from 1.3% in 2011-12 to 3.9% in 2022-23. In the urban areas, this increased from 3.3% in 2011-12 to 11% in 2022-23.

“Non-response is predominantly an urban phenomena and its prevalence is increasing much more in urban areas than in rural areas,” said Amitava Saha, Deputy Director General, Household Survey Division, NSSO said, adding that it is an issue in higher income groups in both urban and rural areas.

Officials cited several instances where the survey sample in such localities had to be substituted as the survey officers were either unable to enter the complex or get people to provide them with information. Main challenges reported include problems in getting entry into such societies and complexes and there is also often no response or lack of availability of such high income persons for responding to survey questions.