From Our Correspondent
GUWAHATI:Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Saturday inaugurated the fourth centre of the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) at Tezpur in northern Assam’s Sonitpur district.
This will be the first such Institute in the entire North-East.
Inaugurating the NE centre, Mr Mukherjee, who is also the chairman of the ISI, hoped that the centre which will start fuctioning from its temporary premises inside Tezpur Central University for the time being, would help in training people for better economic planning and development.
He dwelt on the rich heritage of the ISI, which has been an important institute contributing towards nation building.
Speaking, here, Pranab said that Indian statistical system was undergoing a steady transformation in response to the new challenges arising out of globalisation and liberalisation of the country’s economy
The Indian statistical system resolved many significant structural and operational changes in the statistical system both at the Centre and the states, said Mukherjee
“Statistics today has become a powerful tool for planning and reforms. It forms the foundation of all effective planning in the world today. All major nations use statistical tools and techniques for national planning,” pointed out Mukherjee who is also the chairman of the Indian Statistical Institute.
“The importance of unbiased and trustworthy statistical data cannot be undermined for a democratic society. Decisions based on rigorous statistical outcomes are precise and, therefore, augment anticipatory results,” he said.
“In any economy the industry and commerce bank critically upon statistical information on which they base their investment decisions,” the minister added.
Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was earlier scheduled to inaugurate the centre, but other pressing engagements at the national capital compelled the PMO to cancel his programme at Tezpur.
The permanent campus of the ISI’s NE Centre will be completed in about three years time on a plot of 25 acres of land provided by the Assam government near the Tezpur University campus.
The ISI, headquartered at Kolkata, was founded by professor PC Mahalanobis on December 17, 1931, and recognized as an institution of national importance by an act of the Parliament in 1959.
The Institute has three more centres at Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.