Dasgupta was speaking at a seminar jointly organised by the NSSO and the Development and Planning Department, the West Bengal government.

Assuring a 100 per cent funding from the state government, the minister said this project could also look into various aspects of relief distribution during the flood.

“A sample design can be done by the NSSO and the Bureau of Applied Economics and Statistics (BAES) of the West Bengal government,” said Dasgupta. “The data could be jointly collected,” he added .

Director General NSSO, PK Ray pointed out the need for collecting data, which could be used even in common household activities. The seminar was also attended by Dr S K Gupta, ex-senior statistician, UN Statistical Commission.

To mark the birth anniversary of the multi-faceted statistician, Professor P C Mahalanobis, a three-day exhibition called ‘India in Graphs and Charts” was hosted at Gaganendra Pradarshala.

The idea was to bring statistics closer to people through the pictorial depiction of various social and economic aspects of the country.

The displays at exhibition covered a diverse range of areas in the consumption sector, agriculture, environment, energy and others.