NEW DELHI – A group of more than 100 experts sounded a pre-election alarmFriday over Indian economic data, accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’sgovernment of tweaking or burying unwelcoming numbers.
Modi is vulnerable over his economic record in the polls starting on April11, in particular a failure to meet promises to create enough jobs for themillion Indians entering the labour market each month.
The warning comes after India’s central bank chief quit in December in aspat over alleged government interference. His successor, a Modi ally,oversaw a economy-boosting cut in interest rates last month in his firstmonetary policy meeting.
The 108 economists and social scientists said in an open letter that Indianstatistics were “under a cloud for being influenced and indeed evencontrolled by political considerations”.
“(Any) statistics that cast an iota of doubt on the achievement of thegovernment seem to get revised or suppressed on the basis of somequestionable ideology,” they said.
The opposition Congress party of Rahul Gandhi, who has called Modi’s recordon employment a “national disaster”, jumped on the letter.
“How much more can this govt. embarrass us on a global level?,” the partysaid on its official Twitter account.
Economists in fellow emerging Asian giant China and abroad have longsuspected that data there is also massaged, often noting that full-yeargross domestic product hits Beijing’s pre-set targets with suspiciousregularity.’Highest in a decade!’
In 2015, the Indian Central Statistics Office (CSO) revised economic outputnumbers for past years, changing the base year and showing significantlyfaster — and questionable — growth rates.
The letter also questioned a revised growth rate of 8.2 percent in 2016-17,”the highest in a decade!”, that “seems to be at variance with the evidencemarshalled by many economists”.
That raised particular suspicion since it was when “demonetisation” — oneof Modi’s biggest and most derided economic policies when 86 percent ofbanknotes were withdrawn — hit businesses hard.
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This was followed in 2017 by the tardy rollout of a nationwide new Goodsand Services Tax (GST), which has been praised by experts but which has hadconsiderable teething problems.
The letter also noted that a major and overdue survey on employment hasstill not been released. Two senior statistics officials have resigned inprotest at the delay.
Press reports have said the study, the first of its kind since 2011-12,showed unemployment was at its highest since the 1970s. The government saysit has not been finalised.
“The national and global reputation of India’s statistical bodies is atstake. More than that, statistical integrity is crucial for generating datathat would feed into economic policy-making and that would make for honestand democratic political discourse,” the report said.
Signatories included Sripad Motiram at the University of MassachusettsBoston, Paul Niehaus at the University of California San Diego and AbhijitBanerjee at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
“Quality of data has deteriorated and governmental interference has createdan atmosphere where we don’t have objective assessment of India’s economicgrowth,” Ashutosh Datar, an independent economist, told AFP.
“The government’s interference has created a huge problem,”
The government was yet to comment on the letter. – APP/AFP
