Narratives of statistical decline require much corrective rework

The story of a golden age in the 50s and 60s followed by a long slump fails to acknowledge strides made by official statistics

- T.C.A. ANANT

There has been a steady outpouring of articles and op-eds in the recent past complaining about a decline in our statistical system. A prominent illustration of this is a recent research paper by Pramit Bhattacharya written for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, India’s Statistical System: Past, Present, Future. As I intend critiquing this paper in this column, I should start by observing that it has many useful and valuable insights and should be read by all stakeholders in our statistical system. The problem is that these insights have been woven in a narrative which is deeply problematic. My column will focus on three types of problems, which also permeate the discussion on India’s official statistics.

To start with, it is worth pointing out that this paper has bought into a Narrative of Decline. See, for example, Social Science Research Capacity in South Asia: A Report (2002) by Partha Chatterjee et al, and more generally, Cultural Pessimism: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World (2001) by Oliver Bennett. The way this Narrative is structured for India is that there was a Golden Age of Official Statistics in the 1950s and 60s, followed by a period of decline for almost 30 years. This was then followed by what can be best described as a stuttering revival, which in recent years has stalled with signs of decay. The Narrative is spun with some examples. The trouble with this analysis is that it is factually wrong.