The India story in numbers

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: Numbers can tell the story. And nowhere perhaps is this more relevant than in the last decade where the India story has been told and retold in numbers. But as inflation yo-yo-ed this year and the growth of the economy stuttered, the accuracy of those numbers have become a serious debate in media, industry and most importanlty within the govenment itself. Post-February 2008, ministry of statistics and programme implementation started getting varied requests for information on a regular basis. Pronab Sen, secretary and chief statistician of India, confirms, “We have people who question why government data is posted randomly, but the fact remains, they look for the data in a random manner and only when the need arises. From the government’s end there is a well-defined calendar which is posted on the Website and data is released accordingly. But it is only when there is a perceived crisis that people seek data and information. Once things get back to normal we come back to our complacent maze again.”

With the integration of financial markets globally and the world economy experiencing several setbacks in the 1990s an urgent need was felt for introducing a standardised information and dissemination system to minimise the possibility of market participants acting on misinformation or misinterpretation of information. As the IMF rightly pointed out, one of the major reasons behind these crises’ was the lack of adequate, timely and reliable information in a standardised form. Such information deficiencies made it difficult to anticipate and respond to crises, while lack of standardisation either obscured financial weaknesses and imbalances in countries or led to misinterpretation by the market agents.

IMF’s Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) was set up in 1996 to guide countries that have, or that might seek, access to international capital markets in the dissemination of economic and financial data to the public. Under the SDDS, the Reserve Bank of India adhered to the responsibility of disseminating information on analytical accounts of the banking sector, analytical accounts of the central bank, share price index, balance of payments, international reserves and exchange rates.