Artha Global hosted a brown bag with Mahesh Vyas, MD and CEO of the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, on Thursday, September 29, 2022, from 5:00 PM-6.30 PM IST. This was an in person, on-the-record event hosted at the Artha Global office in Khar West, Mumbai.
About the event:
The Consumer Pyramids Household Survey is India’s largest, fastest and the most high-frequency household survey, conducted by CMIE. Given the paucity of official data, CPHS has become a popular dataset and has been utilised to study a wide range of socio-economic issues including unemployment and household incomes, among others. During the Covid-19 pandemic, CPHS continued to release data from the survey, which was used to assess the impact of government policies on the economic condition of households.
Mahesh Vyas, MD and CEO, CMIE, addressed a brown bag at the Artha office, where he spoke at length about how the CPHS was conceptualised and how it is engineered to be representative, timely, and reliable in its findings. He also talked about the methodology that drives the survey, and who carries it out. The session dived deep into the science and art of creating longitudinal surveys, and working around its limitations. He also focused on the principles of good survey design and the importance of communicating survey findings in a clear way, and avoiding mixing opinions with facts and analysis.
About the speaker:
Mahesh Vyas is the chief architect of CMIE’s proprietary databases. He created the Consumer Pyramids database by setting up the largest, fastest and technologically the most advanced household survey in India. Besides other applications of this database, he initiated and created the first set of fast frequency macroeconomic indicators (unemployment and consumer sentiments), from a private agency in India.
As MD and CEO of CMIE for over 25 years, he strategised and engineered the company’s transition from a private think tank to a database company and then into a database-oriented business solutions company. Mahesh writes a weekly column for Business Standard.