Why we don’t like data? Psst…it disturbs the narrative

Politicians may not agree with any data put out by non-government agencies but...

The word ‘data’ has Latin origins. As Jer Thorp writes in Living in Data: “It first appeared in the English language on loan from Latin, where it meant “a thing given, a gift delivered or sent”. In its early usage, the giver of data was the almighty god and hence, it carried a “particular strength of truth”.

Data continues to carry a strength of truth and given this, governments try to control it in one way or another. Take the case of Tanzania. In September 2018, it decided to impose fines and/or at least three years in jail, on anyone questioning the official data.

Closer home, data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed that unemployment rate in the state of Haryana stood at 34%. This didn’t go down well with Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar. The Tribune reported Khattar as saying: “CMIE…adopted various tricks to defame the state government.” He even threatened to “raise CMIE with the state Attorney General and if some action has to be taken against them, we will.”

Politicians may not agree with any data put out by non-government agencies, nonetheless, they need to specifically explain why they disagree with such data, rather than saying it is a conspiracy against their government and threatening legal action.

Also read: Data first, action next

In fact, at a more general level, under the current regime, the importance of data has gone down dramatically. Take the case of the household consumption expenditure survey of 2017-18. The data collected through this survey was never released. This, even after the Chairman of the National Statistical Commission tried to get it released. The government said that there were quality issues with the data. Interestingly, a November 2019 news report in the Business Standard based on the survey data had said: “Consumer spending fell for the first time in more than four decades in 2017-18, primarily driven by slackening rural demand.”

Given that the data for the 2017-18 survey isn’t available publicly even today, the last survey for which such data is available was carried out in 2011-12. How does one make sense of the economy in 2021-22 by using data from 2011-12? The government doesn’t seem to care.

A major change that the Indian economy has seen over the last few years is the weakening of the informal sector. The sector has been badly hit, first due to demonetisation and the GST, and then due to the pandemic lockdowns and restrictions.

Indeed, surveys carried out by sector-level business associations, from textile to restaurants, have shown this very clearly. But there is no aggregate-level data available that can clearly tell us the overall state of the informal economy.

This information is key to calculating the GDP, the size of the economy, and its growth rate.

Given that the informal economy has been negatively impacted over the last few years, the economy hasn’t been growing as fast as it used to. It may have even contracted, for that matter. The point is, we don’t know.

Nonetheless, as several economists have pointed out in the past, while making the GDP calculation, the assumption that the informal sector is growing as fast as the formal sector continues to be made. This is something that can be set right by carrying out a proper country-level survey of the informal sector.

Finally, let’s get back to the issue of unemployment. If a private firm can carry out a country-level unemployment survey and put out the results for a particular month at the beginning of the next, there is no reason the government cannot do the same and come up with its own country-level unemployment survey published on a regular basis. If publishing data at the beginning of the month is a problem, the data can always be published with a month’s lag, as is the case with several economic indicators.

Of course, if the government does so, questions will be raised when the unemployment rate goes up. As is well known, the current dispensation doesn’t like questions being asked, because it disturbs the projected narrative.

There’s a line in poet and lyricist Gulzar’s song Yaaram in the 2013 movie Ek Thi Daayan: “koi khabar aayi na pasand, toh end badal denge” (if there’s any news in the paper that we don’t like, we’ll change the ending of the story).” That’s easily done when there’s no data. That’s the long and short of it.