India’s statistics ministry defends 7.8% GDP growth amid data overhaul and political row

India’s statistics ministry has strongly rebutted criticism of its latest GDP figures, asserting methodological integrity amidst political and technical disputes over the nation’s economic growth rate and recent data revamp.

India’s statistics ministry has gone on the offensive after last week’s unexpectedly strong growth print, issuing a six-point rebuttal to critics who said the April-June figure had been flattered by revisions to older data. Saurabh Garg, secretary in the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, said the dispute reflected confusion about the revised framework rather than fabrication, telling reporters he expected a “more informed debate” once economists became familiar with the new methods. India Today separately reported Garg rejecting claims that the numbers had been manipulated, while the Free Press Journal said officials described the rival 2.6% calculation as “statistically invalid”. (indianexpress.com)

The official release on 31 August put real GDP for the first quarter of 2026-27 at ₹81.36 lakh crore, up from ₹75.46 lakh crore a year earlier, and nominal GDP at ₹88.27 lakh crore against ₹80.00 lakh crore, implying growth of 7.8% in real terms and 10.3% in current prices. Real gross value added was estimated at ₹73.82 lakh crore and nominal GVA at ₹80.53 lakh crore. Reuters reported that the reading beat both economists’ expectations and the Reserve Bank of India’s 7% forecast, while the previous quarter’s growth rate was revised up to 8.6% from 7.8%. (pib.gov.in)

The immediate flashpoint was the claim by former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg that growth was really only 2.6%. Mint said that argument mixed roughly ₹86 trillion for the June 2025 quarter from the old 2011-12-based series with roughly ₹88 trillion for the June 2026 quarter from the new 2022-23-based series. The ministry’s answer, echoed by the Free Press Journal and The Indian Express, is that the year-earlier comparison must be made on the rebased series, where the comparable nominal figure is around ₹80 lakh crore rather than the old ₹86.05 lakh crore. (livemint.com)

That revision sits inside a bigger statistical overhaul unveiled in February. Mint reported that rebasing GDP to 2022-23 and broadening the underlying dataset reduced the measured size of the economy by roughly 2.9% to 3%, effectively correcting what it said had been an overestimate under the older framework. The ministry says the revised quarterly series now incorporates the new Output Producer Price Index, the updated 2022-23 Index of Industrial Production, the Banking Services Price Index and refreshed administrative data, and that the estimates are compiled in line with the IMF’s Quarterly National Accounts Manual, 2017. (livemint.com)

One of the sharpest technical disputes is over double deflation, the method used to strip inflation out of both output and inputs before measuring real value added. The Indian Express reported that, before the new series, India largely used this approach only for agriculture and mining, whereas the revised system applies it across sectors. Garg called the method “new for everyone”, and Reuters quoted him saying the shift to more granular price data and extra sources helped raise the number of deflators used in the estimates to more than 300 from about 180 previously. (indianexpress.com)

The government’s case is that the headline number is not detached from activity on the ground. India Today reported Garg saying the 7.8% figure was “corroborated by a number of real economy figures”, including manufacturing and services PMIs, electricity generation, cement and steel output, consumption and other services indicators. Even so, Mint noted that quarterly GDP numbers are preliminary by design: they are published about two months after a quarter ends and can be revised repeatedly over the following two years. The same Mint account said June-quarter growth for 2025-26 was first reported at 7.8%, then cut to 6.8% in June 2026, before being edged up to 6.9% in August under the new series. (indiatoday.in)

The row has therefore become political as well as technical. Mint said Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the print as a “Herculean feat”, while The Indian Express reported Congress describing the number on X as “7.8% GDP Growth in Fudged Data, 2.6% in Reality”. Reuters said Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh also branded the figures “statistical gymnastics”. Beneath the sparring lies a deeper credibility problem: Mint argued that scepticism persists because rapid headline growth has not felt transformative to many households, and because India’s average local-currency growth between 2019 and 2025, at 5.4%, trails the early demographic-dividend performances it cited for China, South Korea and Vietnam. (indianexpress.com)

For now, the ministry is standing by both the number and the method. Its 31 August note said the quarterly estimates are produced using a benchmark-indicator approach, and that a fuller “Sources and Methods” publication is due in September 2026. The same official release said the next quarterly GDP reading, for July to September 2026, is scheduled for 30 November. That means the present fight is unlikely to be settled by rhetoric alone; it will turn instead on whether the fuller documentation persuades economists that the rebased series is a better map of a fast-changing economy than the one it replaced. (pib.gov.in)