Policies are only as good as the statistics used for arriving at the decisions – and the Indian government has been found wanting in that respect.
By Prosenjit Datta, former editor of Business Today and Businessworld magazines
For a government that is extremely fond of repeating that Data is the New Oil, lack of proper, accurate and timely statistics is proving to be its Achilles heel when it comes to policymaking. Whether this is because it has not been able to fix its data collection and analysis problems in six years or whether it is because Prime Minister Narendra Modi relies on his gut more than on statistics is anybody’s guess. But by now, it would be apparent to almost all ministers and bureaucrats that they are taking all decisions based on incomplete, faulty or outdated numbers.
The data problem shows up in small ways and big. The Labour Ministry had sheepishly admitted that it had no data on migrant labour when the issue of organising relief and travel for them came up. (Neither did the states where they were working or the states they belonged to, but that is another story). Meanwhile, the New Indian Express reports that the government is considering a proposal for suspension of IIP and Inflation data till July end because of the slow flow of information and problems with collecting data due to the long lockdown. https://www.prosaicview.com/bad-data-and-policy-making/
This article was first published by ProsaicView.