In August, 1949, the Government of India set up a High Powered Expert Committee popularly known as the ‘National Income Committee’ under the chairmanship of Professor P.C. Mahalanobis. Based on the methodology and the pattern of presentation recommended by this Committee, the first official estimates of national income with 1948-49 as the base year were prepared by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) and published in the Estimates of National Income in 1956. Ever since, the CSO has regularly continued to undertake a review of the methodology and the database used in the estimation of various aggregates.

In the past, national accounts were revised decennially, changing the base to a year coinciding with the decennial population census. This was primarily because in the base year estimates, the information on work forcc played an important role and the work force estimates were obtained from the population census conducted decennially. Accordingly, the base years of the National Accounts Statistics series have been shifted from 1948-49 to 1960- 61 in August 1967, from 1960-61 to 1970-71 in January 1978 and from 1970- 71 to 1980-81 in February 1988.

The national income series with 1948-49 as the base commonly known as the ‘conventional series’ continued till 1966. The special feature of the revised series of national income with 1960-61 as base was the estimate of capital formation’ and ‘saving’. Accordingly, in 1969, two special Brochures viz., National Income Statistics-Estimates of Capital Formation in India-1960-61 to 1965-66 were published. Subsequently, the aggregates of capital formation and saving formed an integral part of the national income series published annually by the CSO.

In course of time, the coverage was further extended to include private consumption expenditure, factor incomes, and consolidated accounts of the nation and detailed accounts of the public sector. Accordingly, with effect from January 1975, the title of the publication on national income was changed to National Accounts Statistics (NAS) to depict the expanded scope of the publication.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

The revised series with 1970-71 as the base was published in NAS 1978. These estimates had the same scope, coverage and methodology as in the earlier estimates included in NAS. In 1988, CSO released a new series of national accounts with 1980-81 as the base year. This series, besides making use of the latest available data, undertook, inter alia, revision of estimates of consumption of fixed capital stock using the Perpetual Inventory Method. The coverage of the series was enlarged to include the state of Sikkim.

In February 1999, the CSO released a New Series of National Accounts Statistics with 1993-94 as the base year replacing the earlier series with 1980- 81 as the base year. The CSO has used for the first time work force estimates based on National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO)’s quinquennial survey employment and unemployment (1993-94) instead of the work force estimates based on population census. This deviation was necessitated because in the population census, the work force (especially female work force in the rural areas) was not adequately captured.