Selective doubts.

"Doubts are often raised by some economists over the veracity of India's GDP estimates," but only when the growth in GDP is high and not when it falls, wrote Krishnamurthy Subramanian. In any economy, the Real GDP and the Real Gross Domestic Income (GDI) should be about equal but in the US there is a difference of $800 billion between Real GDP and Real GDI. "At 2.7% of GDP, this discrepancy is incredibly large as US's GDP growth itself is only 3.4%." So should the US figures also be described as "fake"? In the US every aspect of the economy is studied by the Federal Reserve, which has 12 branches, big commercial banks, universities (Ideas) and a large number of think tanks (INOMICS). In India, the government decides what story to feed the public. "After facing setbacks in the general elections, the Narendra Modi-led government doesn't want to give an impression to the public that it is collecting high taxes by way of indirect taxes, government sources told TNIE after the Centre didn't release official figures of monthly collection of goods and services tax (GST)." In 2019, acting Chairman of the National Statistical Commission (NSC) PC Mohanan and member of NSO J Meenakshi resigned in protest against government interference in data release. NDTV. "While few believe Indian statisticians are actively working to make growth numbers look better than they are, less and less data is publicly available, methods are less transparent and the GDP figures in particular sometimes diverge puzzlingly from independent data." India's large services sector and the informal economy are hard to calculate and "The figures for value-added contributed by the private sector have been particularly worrisome. They are often out of sync with other macroeconomic indicators." "India has wound up with official statistics that are unpredictable, don't match up with other figures, aren't robust to how price shifts are calculated and provide limited comparability over time," wrote Mihir Sharma. "The decennial population census that was scheduled in 2021 has still not happened." The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) "estimates that from the end of 2018-19 up to end of 2023-24, close to 151 million jobs were created," despite the pandemic in 2020 and 2021.The Late Chinese Premier Li Kiquang "liked looking at indicators like railway cargo, electricity consumption and loans disbursed by banks to get an indication of which way the Chinese economy was really headed." Perhaps we need our own Li Kiquang Index, wrote Vivek Kaul. In August, the same Mr Subramanian claimed that India can become a $55 trillion economy by 2047. All we have to do is grow by 8% every year. TOI. "For the past 15 years, incomes of ordinary Indians - those between the top 15% and 50% of the population - are stagnating." "Over 120 million people between 18 and 35 are neither in education nor looking for employment." India is showing the "markers of a failed middle-income country," said Rathin Roy. Economists in India have become sycophants. "Policy positions no longer seem based on economics. Instead, economists' public utterances tend to signal a leaning towards personalities or politics, perhaps to get picked for policymaking positions, or seem to vent frustration at getting fired from such jobs," wrote Puja Mehra. Economists or sycophants, toadies, creepy-crawlies? So many Lord Haw Haws (wikipedia).