Government Data Missing, Last NCRB Report on ‘Crime in India’ Available for the Year 2016

Misinformation and missing information are two searing aspects before the ongoing general elections 2019. While the country is flooded with fake news and misinformation being spread through almost all digital platforms, television broadcasting and other media sources, essentially aimed at polarisation of votes for the benefit of specific political players, the people are not being informed about the crucial data on crime such as atrocities on SC/STs, women, children and so on, and the government bodies responsible in publishing such data do not have reasons for not making them public.

National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) under Union Ministry of Home Affairs has been the executive body in bringing out comprehensive information on the crime scenario in the country. NCRB, however, released the last ‘Crime in India’ data for the year 2016 at the end of 2017. While the similar crime information for the year 2017 was expected to be out by the end of 2018, it has not been the case. The bureau has not even released its annual report on ‘Accidental Deaths and Suicides (ADSI) for the year 2016, a crucial source for farmers’ suicides.

“I’m not authorised to speak to media. Whatever data the bureau has compiled, it is on the NCRB website,” said Sanjeev Kumar, Chief Statistician of NCRB. This is the NCRB response when Newsclick enquired why the data was not being released as per the usual practice of the bureau.

Also Read: 108 Economists, Social Scientists Slam Modi Govt For Tweaking Data

A similar response came earlier this year to a Right to Information (RTI) application with NCRB, which sought “farmers’ suicides data for the whole country from 2016 to 2018 and the reasons for not making them public”. The response was that the “data for accidental deaths and suicides for 2016 is under finalisation.”

Government Institutions Compromised?

“It has been the common tendency of the Bharatiya Janata Party government to suppress any information revealing the fallacies of its regime,” says MG Devasahayam, retired IAS officer. He said that the people are being denied basic information on the country’s growth statistics as the constitutional and executive bodies are compromised.

Earlier this year, controversy over the employment data has been under spotlight when two non-official members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC), P C Mohanan and J V Meenakshi resigned from their posts in the apex statistical body claiming that the government withheld the release of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) reports on jobs approved by NSC.

The Business-Standard published a leaked NSSO’s periodic labour force survey (PLFS) report which stated that the country's unemployment rate stood at over a four-decade high of 6.1 per cent between July 2017 and June 2018. The PLFS was a replacement of the Labour Bureau’s annual Employment-Unemployment Survey (EUS). The last EUS report was released for year 2015-16 in 2017. The BJP government has also stopped the quarterly employment survey conducted by the Labour Bureau.

In March this year, as many as 108 prominent economists and social scientists had raised concerns over the “political interference” in influencing the statistical data. Pointing out that the Central Statistics Office revised GDP estimates (8.2 per cent) were in variance with projections marshalled by prominent economists, the joint statement said that the Indian statistics and the institutions associated with it have, however, come under “a cloud for being influenced and indeed even controlled by political considerations.”

Surjit S Bhalla, the former member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Economic Advisory Council, in his book 'Citizen Raj' has made similar observations. Bhalla termed the withholding the NSSO unemployment data by the government as a "huge mistake".

Also Read: Jobs Data Report ‘Final’, NSSO Reports ‘Never’ Cleared by Cabinet: Experts

Opposition parties in BJP ruled states have also raised concerns over the delay in the release of Comptroller and Auditor General reports of the states.

Commentators argue that the BJP government has its own ways of dealing with data either by purposely blocking information or by suppressing crucial pieces of data. It is to be noted that the Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011 data was made available to the public only in parts, which means that the actual distribution of the castes across the country was withheld by the respective governments.

As multiple news reports point out, the ruling BJP party supporters are way ahead in circulation of fake news when compared with other political parties. Thus, these elections would also gauge the misled and missing information against ground realities.