The Government of India has been observing 29th June every year since 2007 as "Statistics Day", to mark the birth anniversary of Late Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, also in recognition of his valuable contribution to the field of official statistics and to popularize the use of Statistics in everyday life.

Statistics Day is celebrated by the Central and State governments as also by Universities and colleges to create public awareness about the role and importance of statistics in socio-economic planning and policy formulation.

One particular theme of current national importance is chosen each year to commemorate this day and focused discussions are planned towards filling data gaps and improvement in quality of data relating to that theme. The theme of Statistics Day this year (2021) was SDG 2 (End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture).

On account of the prevailing situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the main event of the Statistics Day 2021 was organized virtually. The virtual event was attended by representatives of Central/ State Governments, academic institutions and other National and International Agencies. On behalf of FAO, Mr. Pietro Gennari, Chief Statistician, Mr. Tomio Shichiri, FAO Representative in India, and Professor Vikas Rawal participated in the event.

Mr Gennari, in his speech said, ‘India's Statistical System, whose foundation was laid by Professor Mahalanobis, continues to be a model for the rest of the world. This has not only meant that the country produces comprehensive and high quality data, based on rigorous and well-designed statistical methods, it has also made India a torchbearer for other developing countries.’ He said, ‘FAO has a long history of supporting Indian agencies in developing these agricultural statistics methods and promoting their adoption worldwide.’ He added that, FAO works jointly with the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare (MoA&FW), the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI), NITI Aayog and other Departments of the Government to strengthen the national monitoring system for the SDG indicators related to food and agriculture. He underlined that by strengthening India's SDG monitoring system, FAO and MOSPI are contributing to improve the overall statistical infrastructure and the national data collection programme.

Mr Genarri stressed that the world is not on track to achieve the SDG targets on food security and nutrition. Furthermore, current estimates suggest, that the COVID-19 pandemic may have pushed between 80 and 130 million additional people into chronic hunger. Of all the countries, India has the largest number of undernourished people and a huge burden of malnutrition. In the three-year period 2017-19, before the pandemic, 190 million people in India faced chronic hunger. In 2019, about 40 million children under five years of age were stunted and about 20 million children under five years of age were affected by wasting. Given this situation, for any progress to occur towards reaching Goal 2 at the global level, advances made in India would be critical. This makes the issue of monitoring country's progress to achieve Goal 2 all the more important.

He mentioned that, over the last 2 years, FAO has worked closely with the MOSPI, to better align the National with the Global Indicator Framework for SDG Monitoring in the area of food and agriculture. Considerable work has been done in this direction and, as a result, India has already incorporated several globally agreed indicators into its National Indicator Framework and is in the process of incorporating others. This collaboration has been of great benefit also for FAO as it has provided the Organization a model for its capacity building activities in other countries.

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