Improvement of Agricultural Statistics (IAS) Scheme

Improvement of Agricultural Statistics is a sub component of the scheme “Integrated Scheme on Agriculture Census, Economics & Statistics”. It is a salary-oriented scheme with 100 percent grants-in-aids to State Governments for the purpose of salary and other allowances to their employees engaged in the scheme activities. The basic objective of the scheme is to collect and improve agricultural statistics in the form of area, production and yield rate for the principal agricultural crops. The scheme has three components; Timely Reporting Scheme (TRS), Establishment of an Agency for Reporting of Agricultural Statistics (EARAS), Improvement of Crop Statistics (ICS). The Component-wise details of the scheme are as under: –

Timely Reporting Scheme (TRS): The objective of this component is to obtain estimates of area under principal crops in each season, with the breakup of area under irrigated/unirrigated and traditional /high yielding varieties of the crops on the basis of random sample of 20% of villages by a specific date. These estimates are used for generating advance estimates of production of principal crops. This component is being implemented in 16 land record states namely Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh and also in Union Territories of Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and Puducherry.

Establishment of an Agency for Reporting of Agricultural Statistics (EARAS): This component is being implemented in the permanently settled states of Kerala, Odisha and West Bengal and North Eastern States of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura. Under this component, an agency has been established in these states for generating estimates of area and production of principal crops and land use statistics, on the basis of complete enumeration of 20% villages in each year.

Improvement of Crop Statistics (ICS): The objective of this component is to improve the quality of statistics on area and production of crops through supervision and monitoring. Under this component, a sample check of area enumeration and crop cutting experiments of 10,000 villages and approximately 30,000 crop cutting experiments at harvest stage are undertaken. These samples are equally shared by the Central Agency i.e. National Statistical Organisation and the State Agricultural Authorities. These checks specially relate to (a) Enumeration of crop-wise area covered in the selected villages as recorded by the Patwari; (b) Total of the Area under each crop recorded in Khasra Register of villages; and (c) Supervision of Crop Cutting Experiments at the harvest stage. This component is being implemented in all TRS states and the Union Territories of Puducherry, Ladakh and Jammu & Kashmir.

Monitoring/Reporting Mechanism – The IAS Scheme is monitored through following parameters:

• Quarterly Progress Reports (QPR), Monthly Progress Reports (MPR) and Physical and Financial Progress Reports by all the State Implementing Agencies regarding progress of field work, allocation and expenditure of total funds released on quarterly/monthly basis and status of total sanctioned posts under this scheme
• High Level Coordination Committee (HLCC) meetings is also being conducted by various States annually, where officials of the concerned departments/ministry participate and address the various issues faced by the States.
• Conduct of workshops, seminars and other meetings quarterly/biannually which also helps in addressing issues and in efficient monitoring of the IAS Scheme.