TN finance minister stresses on need for data for better governance

The Tamil Nadu government has scope for conducting accurate state-specific sample surveys, similar to the ones done by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) to improve availability of data for taking policy decisions, said Minister for Finance and Human Resources Management Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, in Chennai on Monday (December 6).

The Tamil Nadu minister was speaking at the launch of a book, ‘Whole Numbers and Half Truths’, authored by data journalist S Rukmini. Senior journalist M Gunasekaran moderated the discussion.

“We have taken initiatives like data purity and data-centric governance to run a government based on information… surveys would be conducted at the ground level after obtaining information by cross-referencing the existing data sets and other methods,” said Thiaga Rajan.

Further emphasizing the importance of data, the state finance minister said, “Fund allocation could be done in a better way with the availability of current data. However, at several places, there is no data at all. So, it is better to have delayed or old data instead. For example, the state government has undertaken the task of delimitation of wards for local body elections. The process is done based on the 2011 census, which is the only latest information available with us.”

The minister, however, said that since Tamil Nadu is one of the fastest urbanizing states with suburban areas changing fast, there is a discrepancy between the census data and reality.

Referring to ‘data of purity project’ and its importance, Thiaga Rajan said the Tamil Nadu government found out that in some cases old-age pension and ration products are still being given in the name of people who died long back.

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On implementation of Right to Information (RTI) Act, the minister said that most of the time the government itself does not have data to publish, so it cannot share anything with the public or media.

The finance minister admitted that the structure of governance in India was not designed to collect data and give it in a time-bound manner. “I agree that things need to improve. We are in the process of trying to figure out a standard model that government bodies like agencies, boards, local bodies and PSUs can adopt,” he added.

“The data simply does not exist or exist in a way that is publishable. We cannot fix it in a month or six months. We need to start a systematic kind of minimal standard for enforcing it,” he said.

The author of the book, ‘Whole Numbers and Half Truths’, Rukmini said the culture of suo motu publication does not exist in many government departments as they don’t see it as the right of citizens.

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When asked why the Dravidian model of governance or Tamil Nadu model is not highlighted at the national level unlike the Kerala model or Gujarat Model, Thiaga Rajan said the messenger is more important than the message itself. “The communication channel and messengers are so powerful that they overwhelm the message,” he said, adding that there has been a drastic change in the way social media has penetrated the society between 2019 and 2021.