CEA V Anantha Nageswaran says mindset that India's data estimates being inferior needs to change

Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran

All estimate methodologies have some limitations, but the mindset that India’s methods for estimating GDP are inferior needs to change, Chief Economic Advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said on Tuesday.

Against the backdrop of persisting concerns in certain quarters about the country’s economic growth figures, Nageswaran highlighted that concerns are raised only when GDP numbers surprise on the upside, while there are no questions about the methodology when the data disappoints. ”It is not as if the Indian GDP numbers are overstating the GDP case but unfortunately, all these… under-informed or half-baked questions are left deliberately hanging so as to sow the seeds of doubt in people, and it does not necessarily serve any purpose because they are not rigorous,” the CEA said.

He was addressing various stakeholders at the pre-release consultative workshop on base revision of CPI, GDP and IIP organised by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation in the national capital.

"In general, we are engaged in an exercise of estimation, and all estimation methodologies will have limitations, but we seem to be particularly fond of questioning our methods, and less so of others, somehow thinking that our methods are inferior to others. It also reflects our mindset, and that is something that we need to change,” Nageswaran said. Seeking to answer those critical of the government’s data estimations, the CEA emphasised the need for everyone to be a lot more mature in the way they evaluate, publicise or write a critique about the data.

Delving deep into the concept of estimations, Nageswaran said that sometimes, there might be a need to fall in line with international practices for comparability reasons. However, ”as things stand, when we raise our questions on the methodology that we are following, we are also not praising them for following certain methodologies which, until now, are being followed by others which have their own limitations”, he pointed out.