Nagaland chief secretary Temjen Toy on Tuesday asked all field officers, engaged in carrying out the 7th economic census in the state, not to take the exercise as a routing work but to give a true picture after the enumeration is done.
Addressing a meeting of the State Level Coordination Committee for 7th economic census at his conference hall in Kohima, Toy, who is the chairman of the committee, directed all officers to have a constant check and work out a mechanism to monitor every household.
He said the economic census is very important because it is through this that the GST is calculated and taken into account for everything from loans up to the Finance Commission.
The meeting discussed matters concerning the payment of honorarium to the supervisors and enumerators and the logistic support on arrangement of manpower for carrying out the census.
Commissioner and secretary, information technology, K.D. Vizo, said the economic census is known to be one of the most complex and massive administrative exercises in which all establishments whether households or non-households, big or small, in the private or public sector are enumerated.
Vizo said the economic census provides up-to-date information on operational and other characteristics such as number of establishments, number of persons employed, source of finance, type of ownership, religion code and social group of propriety/establishments according to their industrial activity, including their distribution in all Indian state, district, village or ward levels for comprehensive analysis of the structure of the economy.
This will be used for micro level or decentralised planning and also for undertaking detailed follow-up sample surveys to assess contribution of various sectors of the economy in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), he said.
Vizo said the main objectives of conducting the 7th economic census are to provide detailed information on operational and other variables, activity wise, of all the establishments, excluding crop production, plantation, public administration, defence and compulsory social security of the country.
The census will be used for benchmark purposes, to provide updated directory of establishments up to the village or ward level for local level planning purposes and use it as an input for the development of the National Business Register.
The census would be useful for estimation of District Domestic Product and to provide an up-to-date frame (list) from which samples could be drawn for collecting detailed information.
During the discussion, commissioner and secretary, economics and statistic, Kelei Zeliang, said the payment of honorarium to the supervisors and enumerators fixed at Rs 3 per household in the country should be increased to Rs 10 per household in Nagaland.
The honorarium should be increased due to the inconvenience faced by the supervisors and enumerators as the state is in a terrain area, said Zeliang.
He added that the work would be carried out by three stakeholders – Common Service Centre, Department of Economics and Statistic and National Sample Survey Organisation (Field Operation Division).