India's national accounts have long struggled to capture the unorganised sector. Critically evaluate the methodological improvements introduced through ASUSE since its inception.

The unincorporated non-agricultural sector employs the bulk of India's non-farm workforce, yet the Committee on Unorganised Sector Statistics (2012) found its measurement too infrequent and coarse for national accounts [1]. The Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) has since narrowed this gap substantially, though residual blind spots persist.

Improvements achieved

• Periodicity: ASUSE replaced quinquennial NSS enterprise rounds with an annual survey, and from 2025 a Quarterly Bulletin (QBUSE) provides interim estimates [2][3].
• Timeliness: release lags compressed to roughly 90–120 days for annual and 45–60 days for quarterly results, making data usable while still current [4].
• Granularity: adopting the district as the basic sampling stratum yielded the first official district-level estimates, covering 757 of 770 districts, plus city-level estimates for 46 million-plus cities [3][5].
• Richer indicators: fixed assets, outstanding loans, internet use and women-run proprietary establishments are now tracked, aiding credit and MSME targeting [2].
• Coverage gap addressed: a Pilot Study on Construction Activities (July–Dec 2025) estimated 10.27 lakh unincorporated construction agencies, probing ASUSE's long-standing exclusion [6].

Limitations that remain

• Construction stays outside regular ASUSE, still only a pilot [5][6].
• MoSPI itself cautions that pre-2025 district figures, though derivable, lacked adequate sample size for reliability [5].
• Shifting reference periods (Oct–Sept for 2023-24 versus Jan–Dec for 2025) weaken inter-round comparability [3].
• Being a sample survey dependent on an enterprise frame, it under-captures mobile, seasonal and home-based own-account units; 13 districts fell outside the frame [3][7].
• District-level stratification demands larger samples, raising cost and field-capacity pressures.

ASUSE has thus evolved from a periodic snapshot into a near-real-time, locally disaggregated instrument, strengthening GVA estimation. Going forward, triangulating it with GST, Udyam and PLFS data, institutionalising construction coverage, and routing outputs to District Planning Committees under Article 243ZD would convert better statistics into genuinely evidence-based local planning.