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Journalism of Courage
Statistically speaking, some things appear to be better than they are. The latest figures from the Central Statistical Organisation CSO seem to belie fears of general economic stagnation. By using a revised base year for its calculations and including data from the unorganised sector for the first time, the CSO has been able to predict a GDP growth rate of 5.8 per cent for the current year, a clear improvement on last year8217;s economic performance. The timing of this discovery should cheer the Finance Minister. He will need every bit of statistical help, illusory or otherwise, when he presents his budget after a dismal year when nothing has gone right at home or abroad. At a time when the eyes of the whole world and its credit-rating agencies are glued to the fiscal deficit, higher GDP estimates and clever accounting methods are all that are left at the eleventh hour to take decimal points off the fiscal deficit.
A base year change even at this stage is not so much of a problem. It will be interesting tosee how the CSO went about gathering data from the unregulated unorganised sector. Whether or not that exercise was sound will be learned in due course. The question that arises immediately is about the basis for the new optimism on the performance in agriculture, fisheries and forestry. The CSO8217;s forecast for agricultural growth is 5.3 per cent and it is this sector that is essentially pulling up the whole growth rate. Growth in almost all other sectors has either declined or stood still with manufacturing and exports putting in the worst performance. Is it that the 0.1 per cent decline in agricultural production in 1997-98 has been replaced by strong recovery in 1998-99 and this despite some problems with the weather? But much as everyone would like to share the CSO8217;s optimism here, it may be wiser to take the figures with a pinch of salt. For one, the assessments of independent and reliable agencies like the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy do not support the official statistics. Then again,official prognoses about agriculture are prone to wide variation throughout the year. This is to be expected given the deterioration in reporting systems. As a result, Yashwant Sinha8217;s own views on the subject have been mercurial, to say the least.
