Economic data: Fact vs fiction | The Indian Express

Economic data: Fact vs fiction | The Indian Express

Written by Surjit S Bhalla |Updated: March 20, 2019 12:40:54 am

The writer is Contributing Editor at The Indian Express, and Consulting Editor at Network 18

Economic data: Fact vs fiction

Annual Survey of Industries data for 2016-17 shows that output growth, and industrial jobs growth, have sharply accelerated post 2013. This data has not been questioned by any expert

Lately, Indian statistics and the institutions associated with it have come under a cloud for being influenced and indeed even controlled by political considerations. (Illustration by Suvajit Dey)

In several articles over the last few months, I have been documenting the following simple point — it is the age of fake news, and political parties across the world have used it, or are using it. My forthcoming book, Citizen Raj: Elections 1952-2019, has a chapter, “The Birth of the Fake and Faulty Twins” where I stress a simple point: Conceptually, it does not benefit an incumbent (especially one with an outright majority) to disseminate fake news. That can only backfire. However, fake news can benefit a challenger who can throw any accusation — as Donald Trump did in the US elections in 2016 — leaving the incumbent to try and prove the impossible.