MoSPI to ask women business owners about barriers in first-ever survey

India's National Statistics Office (NSO), part of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), has proposed that its Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises (ASUSE) ask women business owners, for the first time, about the gender-specific difficulties they face in running and managing their businesses. The proposal is part of a draft questionnaire for the 2027-28 round, released for public comment on Monday, October 26, 2026. The ministry has invited feedback until November 15, 2026.

ASUSE is the government's main yearly measure of India's unincorporated, non-farm businesses: small shops, workshops, tailoring units, home-based manufacturers, repair services and the like that are not registered as companies. These are the businesses through which most Indian women who work for themselves earn a living. The survey already counts how many of these businesses women own. What it has not done until now is ask why women-owned businesses stay small, or what stops them from growing.

That gap matters for policy. Schemes for women entrepreneurs, such as credit lines, procurement preferences and skilling programmes, are designed and judged largely on counts: how many loans, how many registrations, how many women trained. A national survey that records the specific barriers women report would give ministries, banks and state governments evidence on where support is missing, not just where it has been delivered. MoSPI has framed the change as a way to identify the barriers affecting women-led enterprises.

Reports on the draft also stress a limit. The new questions are designed to record the obstacles women name; they are proposals at this stage, and the final wording can change after comments close. They will not, on their own, measure how large each obstacle is or explain its causes. Readers should treat any future results as a starting map rather than a full diagnosis.

The other changes help the women's questions too. Moving to the April-March financial year lines the survey up with budgets and company accounts, making it easier to compare with other official data. Identifying handloom, power-loom and handicraft units is relevant because many such units are run by women, and tracking fixed-asset investment over a longer period will show whether small businesses are buying machines and equipment, a sign of growth.

Women's share of proprietary establishments (MoSPI ASUSE) Survey round | Share owned by women 2022-23 | 22.9% 2023-24 | 26.2% 2025 | 27.0%

Short-term: Women entrepreneurs, self-help groups, industry bodies and researchers can send comments on the draft questionnaire before November 15, 2026. Suggestions made now can shape which barriers the survey asks about.

Long-term: Once the 2027-28 round is completed and published, India would have its first nationwide, official data on the barriers women face in running unincorporated businesses. That evidence could guide the design of credit, market-access and skilling schemes, and let the public check whether those schemes address the problems women actually report.

Who is affected: Women who own or run small, unregistered businesses across India; the NSO field staff who will collect the data; ministries and state departments that design schemes for women entrepreneurs; and lenders and researchers who rely on official small-business data.

Questions and Answers