The National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme
Implementation, is responsible for conduct of large scale sample surveys, in diverse fields, on all
India basis. Primary data is collected regularly through nationwide household surveys on various
socio-economic subjects, Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) under the Collection of Statistics
Act and Enterprise Surveys, as a follow up of the economic census. Besides these surveys, NSSO
collects data on rural and urban prices; plays a significant role in the improvement of crop
statistics through supervision of the area enumeration and crop estimation surveys of the state
agencies. It also maintains a frame of urban areal units for drawing samples for socio-economic
surveys in urban areas. The NSSO functions with requisite autonomy, in matters relating to data
collection, processing and publication/dissemination of results/data based on its surveys, under
overall guidance and supervision of National Statistical Commission (NSC) which appoints
working groups/technical committees comprising both official and non-official members on
different subjects for finalization of survey instruments for its surveys and methodologies for the
same. The Director General (Survey) is responsible for overall coordination and supervision of
all activities of NSSO and is assisted by four Additional Director Generals, each one being in-
charge of separate divisions responsible for four distinct aspects of such large scale surveys
relating to their designing and planning, field work, data processing and coordination.
Price Data Collection
Rural Retail Price Collection (RPC): The data on rural retail prices are collected by Field
Operations Divisions (FOD) regularly for compiling the consumer price index (CPI) for
agricultural labourers/rural labourers on behalf of the Labour Bureau, Ministry of Labour and
Employment. At present, the Labour Bureau compiles and publishes the CPI for agricultural
labourers/rural labourers. A commodity basket consisting of 260 commodities was adopted in
1986 with a view to reflect the price changes in respect of the current consumption pattern. The
price data for the items in the commodity basket are collected every month from a fixed set of
603 villages/markets spread over 26 states/UTs using schedules 3.01 (R).The RPC bulletin called
the ‘Prices and Wages in Rural India’ which is published for each quarter, provides price data
only at national level and wage data at national and state level for 26 major states.
Twenty Point Programme
The Twenty Point Programme (TPP) initiated since 1975 was restructured in 1982, 1986
and 2006. The thrust of the Programme restructured in 2006 is to eradicate poverty and improve
the quality of life of the poor and the underprivileged people all over the country. The
programme covers various socio-economic aspects like poverty, employment, education,
housing, agriculture, drinking water, afforestation and environment protection, energy to rural
areas, welfare of weaker sections of the society, etc.
The Programme originally consisted of 20 points and 66 items being monitored individually
by central nodal ministries concerned. Out of the 66 items, 25 were for monthly monitoring,
while the rest were to be monitored on annual basis by this Ministry. The monthly information in
respect of 21 items was collected from various states/union territories and for the remaining four,
the information was collected from the concerned ministries. One of the 66 items viz.,
‘Sampoorna Grameen Rojgar Yojana (SGRY)’ has since been subsumed into another item
namely ‘National Rural Employment Guarantee Act’ with effect from 2008 and has been
renamed as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act from December 2009.
Since 2014 the data collection is done on quarterly basis and the monthly monitoring has been