The National Statistical Office (NSO) is an institution, specifically the nodal statistical agency of the Government of India, functioning under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI). It is responsible for the collection, compilation, analysis, and dissemination of all official statistics at the national level.
The NSO was created in a major restructuring move, with the order issued on May 23, 2019, by merging two long-standing bodies: the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). This merger was a follow-up to the recommendations of the C. Rangarajan Commission report from 2001. The problem it solved was the need to integrate statistical functions, reduce duplication between the two former bodies, and improve coordination to strengthen the credibility of Indian statistics. The NSSO, which conducted large-scale sample surveys, was originally established in 1950, and the CSO, which compiled national accounts, was developed from a unit set up in 1949.
The NSO works by compiling national accounts statistics, including Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and releasing key macroeconomic indicators like the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) and the Consumer Price Index (CPI). It also conducts large-scale sample surveys on socio-economic indicators. The NSO is headed by the Secretary (Statistics and Programme Implementation).
The NSO connects to the National Statistical Commission (NSC), an autonomous body constituted in 2006 to evolve policies and standards for statistical matters. The formation of the NSO is the recent change, as it replaced the separate functioning of the CSO and NSSO. The merger also involved renaming the Data Processing Division of the former NSSO to the Data Quality Assurance Division (DQAD).