India's silent data revolution will arm policymaking with evidence

Our statistical system is poised for a leap that will allow dynamic policy responses and deepen democratic accountability

- PRACHI MISHRA is professor of economics, and director and head of the Isaac Center for Public Policy, Ashoka University.

India is at the cusp of a transformative data revolution that promises to fundamentally reshape how we understand the economy. The ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI) has embarked on an ambitious modernization agenda that is not merely updating existing systems but re-imagining our entire statistical infrastructure. This represents a significant advance in public administration, with profound implications for policymaking, governance and economic planning.

There are four key aspects of this exercise: timeliness and frequency of data releases, data diversity to expand the statistical universe, harmonization of administrative data-sets and a user-centric shift in producing official statistics.

The most visible transformation is the higher speed and frequency of data dissemination. India's Consumer Price Index (CPI) was already on par with global standards in timeliness, while the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) has evolved from an annual exercise to a monthly pulse-check of employment. What once took 5-6 months to publish now emerges within 45-90 days of completion.

This acceleration extends across indicators. The Index of Industrial Production now appears within 28 days from the end of its reference month, compared to 42 days previously. The extension of quarterly PLFS to rural areas represents a leap that gives policymakers near real-time insights into rural employment trends that used to be invisible for months. Moving the Annual Survey of Unincorporated Sector Enterprises to a quarterly schedule will provide better insights into informal sector activity.