GDP: The devil is in the revisions

Six iterations of annual data over a three-year period raise serious questions about the reliability of national income data as a basis for sound policymaking

Another round of serious questioning over the reliability of India’s national income data has begun because of the manner in which significant downward revisions were made to the growth numbers for the first, second and third quarters of 2019-20. The first quarter growth rate was brought down from 5.6 per cent to 5.2 per cent, but the numbers for the second and third quarters were scaled down even more steeply — from 5.1 per cent to 4.4 per cent for the second quarter and from 4.7 per cent to 4.1 per cent for the third quarter.

The outcome was inevitable.