Missing the data bus? India must act fast, urges top statistician

A senior Indian statistician has called for enhanced data-sharing between institutions and the central government, including access to mobile payments and official records, to boost the accuracy and reliability of key economic indicators.Rajeeva Laxman Karandikar, chairman of the National Statistical Commission, the top advisory body to the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, said many organisations, from banks and payment firms to transport services and even government departments such as tax and railways, are hesitant to share data. The reluctance, he noted in an interview reported by Bloomberg, stems from privacy and legal concerns.“But high-level policy decisions need to be taken as to what can be shared,” he said. Talks are currently underway to enable sharing of masked or aggregated data based on area codes, a move Karandikar said could significantly improve data accuracy, although discussions remain in early stages.As India’s economy continues to grow and attract global investor attention, official economic data is under increasing scrutiny. There is a growing demand for more accurate indicators that reflect real conditions on the ground and help policymakers design better-informed strategies to meet the country’s evolving needs.Still, data sharing between government departments remains difficult due to administrative gaps, infrastructure limitations, and ongoing concerns about data protection. These challenges make it difficult to strike a balance between transparency and privacy.To address these issues, the government has recently taken several steps. These include plans to conduct the long-pending population census, publishing monthly labour data, and releasing more frequent surveys to strengthen economic indicators such as inflation and GDP.Karandikar said many developed nations have already created effective systems to internally share relevant data. “India has not done that fast enough. We need to move in that direction,” he said.The National Statistical Commission has also recommended that the government speed up the release of official statistics. Karandikar believes that wider use of digital tools and greater access to existing data would help reduce delays. “Unless we change and bring in this information technology infrastructure, we will become obsolete,” he said.He further stressed the need to replace long, annual surveys with shorter, quicker ones to make data collection and processing more efficient. “The old methodology of data collection, transmitting, compiling and processing has to change,” Karandikar said, noting that the government has already started implementing some of these improvements.With inputs from Bloomberg