A group of 108 economists and social scientists issued a statement yesterday expressing concern over “political interference” influencing statistical data in India. The signatories work or worked for leading institutions across the globe, including the Madras School of Economics, International Labour Organisation, MIT, Stanford University, Harvard University and others.

The statement said: “India’s statistical machinery enjoyed a high level of reputation for the integrity of the data it produced on a range of economic and social parameters … Lately, the Indian statistics and the institutions associated with it have however come under a cloud for being influenced and indeed even controlled by political considerations.”

The statement cited examples of this “influence”: “In 2018, two competing back series for varying lengths of time were prepared – separately by two official bodies, (a committee of) the National Statistical Commission and later by the CSO. The two showed quite opposite growth rates for the last decade. The National Statistical Commission numbers were removed from the official web site and the CSO numbers were later presented to the public by the Niti Aayog, an advisory body which had hitherto no expertise in statistical data collection. All this caused great damage to the institutional integrity of the autonomous statistical bodies.”

It said: “In fact, any statistics that cast an iota of doubt on the achievement of the government seem to get revised or suppressed on the basis of some questionable methodology.”