Why in the News?
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) is conducting the 75th-anniversary culmination ceremony of the National Sample Survey (NSS) along with World Statistics Day on 18 November 2025.
About National Sample Survey (NSS):
- Origins: Started in 1950 to fill gaps in national income data; expanded into India’s largest multi-topic socio-economic survey system.
- Institutional Home: Conducted by NSSO (set up 1970), now merged into the National Statistical Office (NSO) under MoSPI.
- Organisational Structure: Four key divisions – SDRD (Kolkata) for survey design, FOD (Delhi/Faridabad) for fieldwork, DPD (Kolkata) for data processing, and SCD (New Delhi) for coordination.
Survey Design and Coverage:
- Rounds Structure: Includes large thick rounds every five years (≈1.2 lakh households) and thin rounds on specialised themes.
- Geographic Coverage: Expanded from 1,833 villages in 1950–51 to over 14,000 rural villages and urban blocks in recent rounds.
- Scope: Generates national and state-level estimates on consumption, employment, migration, health, education, disability, housing, agriculture, elderly conditions, and more than 50 socio-economic themes over 75 years.
- Representativeness: Provides robust national and regional estimates but does NOT offer district-level granularity.
Major Surveys Under NSS / NSO:
- Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS): Launched 2017; India’s key source on employment, unemployment, labour force participation, and quarterly urban labour indicators.
- Annual Survey of Industries (ASI): Tracks organised manufacturing — output, inputs, employment, productivity, structural change.
- Price Surveys: Produce CPI-Rural, CPI-Urban, CPI-AL/RL, and contribute to WPI, forming the backbone of inflation monitoring.
- Urban Frame Survey (2022–27): Updates the sampling frame for all urban socio-economic surveys.
- Agriculture and Crop Surveys: Estimate crop yields and support state agricultural statistics systems.
Significance of the NSS:
- Policy Backbone: Critical for designing and evaluating programmes such as MGNREGA, PDS reforms, Ayushman Bharat, labour policies, rural development, and welfare targeting.
- Macroeconomic Relevance: Supports GDP estimation, poverty assessment, consumption tracking, and inflation analysis.
- Long-Term Value: Provides the most reliable, comparable household-level datasets in India, enabling analysis of structural change over decades.
| [UPSC 2018] As per the NSSO 70th Round “Situation Assessment Survey of Agriculture Households”, consider the following statements:
1. Rajasthan has the highest percentage share of agriculture households among its rural households. 2. Out of the total households in the country, a little over 60 percent being to OBCs. 3. In Kerala, a little over 60 percent of agriculture households reported to have received maximum income from sources other than agriculture activities. Which of the statements given above is/are correct? Options: (a) 2 and 3 only (b) 2 only (c) 1 and 3 only* (d) 1, 2 and 3 |
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