The postman in rural areas across the country has his hands full. Apart from his regular job, he now has to go out three to four times a week to collect data from retail outlets which is then used to calculate the rural consumer price inflation.
Faced with an acute manpower shortage, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation tied up with the department of posts to get over the problem of collecting such massive amount of data from rural areas across the country.
"When we were discussing about the comprehensive CPI data we were looking for a department which had reach across the country. We zeroed in on the postal network," said Pronob Sen, adviser in the Planning Commission and former chief statistician of the country.
Faced with an acute manpower shortage, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation tied up with the department of posts to get over the problem of collecting such massive amount of data from rural areas across the country.
"When we were discussing about the comprehensive CPI data we were looking for a department which had reach across the country. We zeroed in on the postal network," said Pronob Sen, adviser in the Planning Commission and former chief statistician of the country.
