The National Family Health Survey began life in 1991. It would soon gain credibility and acceptance. What makes the NFHS particularly valuable, has been its ability to shed light on difficult to measure facets of state-society-family-individual interaction. One such area, is child labour. 

Click on the chart below to get a better understanding of the narrative of progress.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/incidence-of-child-labour-in-india

In 2000, the NSSO survey, had already shown that 5.2 per cent of children were working.

That there were reasons, why the government was reluctant to collect disaggregated information on child labour would emerge when the National Family Health Survey, in 2005 would show that the child labour figure, was 15.2 per cent. This was substantially higher than the NSSO figure, which had just a year, earlier shown, that there had been a drop in the percentage of child labour, from 5.2 per cent to 4.2 per cent. This fall is a figure that the government could use to claim success in the struggle to end child labour.