The Union Cabinet approved a ₹4,371.10 crore programme on November 4 to modernise India’s official statistics over the five financial years from 2026–27 to 2030–31.
The Viksit Bharat Initiative for Statistical Transformation, Analytics & Research, or VISTAR, will cover national statistical operations, support for state systems and the eighth Economic Census.
The Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation proposes 59 surveys during the 16th Finance Commission cycle, compared with 43 major surveys previously. Planned indicators include an Index of Services Production and an Index of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises.
The programme also envisages greater use of artificial intelligence for processing and validating data, alongside alternative sources such as retail scanners and e-commerce records.
States and Union Territories will receive support to improve local estimates. The proposed Economic Census will collect information about non-farm establishments and workers down to gram-panchayat and ward level, forming a base for a National Statistical Business Register.
These are approved programme plans, not completed surveys or newly released census results.
Illustrative archive photograph of numerical tables, not government survey results or the Cabinet meeting. Photo: Numbers And Finance by Ken Teegardin, via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0. Display may be resized or cropped. Adaptations remain under the linked licence.
