'Damaging' vacancy puts India statistics reputation at risk

The Central Statistics Office was without a boss when it released figures last month

Gathering reliable economic data in India is challenging enough. It’s been made more difficult in the more than four months that the nation has been without a chief statistician.
 

TCA Anant retired from the Central Statistics Office on Jan. 31 and the government has been looking for a replacement ever since. Bureaucratic processes have delayed the appointment, and while a few candidates have been interviewed for the job, a final decision is yet to be made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s office.
 

At stake is the reputation of an institution that’s been working hard to rectify the image that India