Can digital crop survey solve India's problem of incoherent estimates?

A few weeks back, Food Secretary Sanjeev Chopra expressed concern over the mismatch of official production estimates and what has been flagged by the industry regarding wheat, saying that such divergence needs to be brought down to a minimum.

Before then, none other than Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in an address, said that inaccurate production numbers hampers decision-making and urged officials to expand digital crop survey pilots to crops other than wheat and rice to accurate estimates.

The question of production numbers has been a puzzle that most governments have found difficult to solve.

A big part of the problem as a senior