Faulty statistics makes us statistically insignificant.

There have been questions about India's GDP data ever since the base year was shifted to 2011-12 in 2015. GDP is a measure of a country's "finished goods and services" produced within its borders. Since consumption patterns change over time the base year is changed to reflect the new goods and services being produced. This is practiced everywhere. But how do you compare the new GDP with that in previous years, called back series, when the contents have changed? This is complicated. "Simply put, the difference in output at 2011-12 between the two series occurred due to an upward or downward shift in the production curve, which included new economic activities and/or excluded older activities that became extinct." The quarrel with the new method arose because it showed a higher growth rate during this government's tenure compared to the growth rate under the previous Congress-led government, wrote TCAS Raghavan. The opposition called the new back series data "gimmickry, jugglery, trickery and chicanery". Two members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC) resigned in protest when the government suppressed the jobs data claiming it was just a draft. But the acting chairman of NSC, PC Mohanan said that the report was final once he approved it. Now the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) has published a report saying that the MCA21 database used for calculating the new GDP is faulty because "38% of companies that are part of the database could not be traced or were wrongly classified". "There is a high probability that India's growth figures will decline if these 'ghost' companies are removed from the data." "The ministry had deemed these companies as 'active companies' -- those that have filed returns at least once in the last three years." Objections to the new GDP data do not stand up to scrutiny, wrote Prof A Javadekar. GDP growth is not directly correlated to bank credit, car sales are related more to fuel prices than to bank credit and growth in the last two years was driven by government spending and not by consumer demand. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) is responsible for the National Accounts Statistics, wrote P Bhattacharya. The Chief Statistician of India (CSI) is secretary to the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) as well as the NSC. "In March 2010, Sen modified the composition of the Standing Committee on Industrial Statistics (SCIS) without consulting the NSC, earning the NSC's ire." "As far as NSSO surveys are concerned, the NSC has regulatory powers, since it took over the role of the governing council," said a former NSC member. "But its oversight of CSO's activities is very limited. CSO could ignore it when it wanted, and did so when it suited them." Too many committees, too many pen-pushers trying to increase their own importance to continue in their tinpot positions. Others must think we are idiots.