Why the recent undermining of the credibility of India’s statistical output is especially regrettable
Over the past two months, Indian national statistics and the organisations that administer them have faced a volley of criticism. In January, two independent members of the National Statistical Commission resigned in protest, over alleged suppression of economic data by the government. More recently, amidst growing scepticism regarding India’s official statistics, more than a hundred scholars comprising economists and social scientists released a statement decrying the fall in standards of institutional independence, suggesting political interference as the cause. Kaushik Basu, a former chief economist of the World Bank, also recently bemoaned the declining credibility of India’s official statistics.
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