Statistical member without statistics.

After a gap of two decades, India has been unanimously elected to the United Nations Statistical Commission, wrote Ashish Kumar & Rama Kamaraju. "The membership is for a term of four years, beginning from January 2024." Two Indians - PC Mahalanobis chaired the Commission for its 8th and 9th sessions held in 1954 and 1956 while VR Rao chaired the 19th session in 1976. "India's four-year membership tenure at the Commission comes at an opportune time. We should seize this opportunity to represent the global south in setting statistical standards and help with their implementation." But, what about our standards? "India's current government has a somewhat difficult relationship with data. Various surveys and calculations, from the national income accounts to household consumption patterns and jobs data, have been cancelled or reviewed," wrote Mihir Sharma. In 2019, two members of the National Statistical Commission (NSC), PC Mohanan and J Meenakshi, resigned because the government suppressed their jobs report. NDTV. The report was leaked to the press anyway. The population census was supposed to be held in 2021, 10 years after the one in 2011, but it was postponed because it was "set to be even more politically explosive. In diverse India, the census provides the last word on the relative sizes of various groups. And those numbers don't just determine their voting power, but also the distribution of welfare and public services." Our calculation of consumer price (CPI) inflation is based on weak data, wrote Pramit Bhattacharya.  There is no producer price index (PPI) "which tracks the price pressures faced by firms when they buy inputs". The Reserve Bank's (RBI) inflation expectation is based on a small sample of 6,000 respondents across 18 cities, thus ignoring the much larger rural population. CPI is based on the National Sample Survey (NSS) consumer expenditure survey in 2011-12 which gives too much weightage to food. Could this be deliberate? In 2021, the pandemic impacted supply chains leading to inflation. The Sidney Morning Herald. Central banks were in a dilemma because increasing interest rates would not increase supplies while they could be blamed for doing nothing. Eventually, the US Federal Reserve raised rates nine times. The last hike was of 25 basis points on 22 March 2023. NBC. The RBI kept interest at 4% for 24 months from May 2020 to May 2022 because inflation was caused by higher food prices. NDTV. In March CPI inflation fell to a 16-month low of 5.66% because of softening food prices. ET. In its April meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), the RBI promptly decided to stop any further rise in interest rate, DH, citing the fall in CPI, even though it predicts strong GDP growth rate of 6.4% and inflation at 5.2% in 2023-24 which is higher than its mandate of 4%. NDTV. So, ignore inflation blaming high food prices, but keep interest rate low when food prices are low. A case of having your food and eating it too.