ESTIMATION OF NATIONAL INCOME:

In India, the first attempt to estimate national income and per capita income was made in the year 1867-68 by Shri Dadabhai Naoroji. This was followed by several intermittent efforts by individuals, officials as well as non-officials.  Immediately after independence, the Government set up the National Income Committee in August, 1949 to prepare a report on national income and related estimates to suggest improvements in the collection of data, and to recommend guidelines for research in the field of national income. The First Report of the Committee was published in 1951, and the Final Report in 1954. The task of preparing national income estimates has been assigned to the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO). The CSO has been producing annual official estimates of national income of India since 1955 and publishing the same in its annual report National Accounts Statistics. It is with the help of these data that we shall try to establish the trend in India's national income over the last fifty-five years.