Measuring socio-economic progress in India: Issues and challenges

Abstract

One of the challenges to the National Statistical Systems worldwide is to capture the indicators of socio-economic progress from the current available framework. The limits of traditional indicators provide little insights about the extent of well being realised in the society,since there is no automatic link between growth and development which aims at improving human and social welfare. Therefore,different countries had tried various approaches to measure their progress of the society. India’s experience with measuring progress in the society ranges from computation of composite index to adoption of a development strategy that emphasises human welfare and well-being of the society as central to all development planning. In this connection,this paper limits its scope to some of the challenges and possibilities in the Indian system for developing the indicators of social progress.