A professional for the job: G P Samanta, India's new chief statistician

Respected economist takes up job as critics keep up their doubts about official data

G P Samanta, a researcher, will be India’s chief statistician at a time when doubts about state-provided data remain.

A professional statistician is taking the post after almost two-and-a-half years, breaking the trend of civil servants heading the job.

Samanta is 55 years old and he holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Mumbai and Master of Statistics from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. He will replace 1986-batch IAS officer Kshatrapati Shivaji. Shivaji holds additional charge as chief statistician, besides being secretary in the ministry of personnel, public grievances and pensions.

He joined the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 1990 as a research officer in the department of statistics and information management. Samanta has since then published research papers in economics.

His latest research paper is called 'Monetary Policy Transparency and Anchoring of Inflation Expectations in India'. The paper, co-authored with Shweta Kumari, constructs an index of monetary policy transparency for India and examines the role of transparency in anchoring inflation expectations.

This paper says that empirical results show that the degree of policy transparency has increased since the adoption of flexible inflation targeting in 2016: a feedback that may give an important insight for the finance ministry and RBI, which are in the midst of reviewing the monetary policy framework and inflation band of 2-6 per cent.

His other research papers cover areas such as relationship between exchange rate and stock prices in India, selecting value-at-risk models for government of India fixed income securities, implementation of value at risk for banking systems in India.

Colleagues described him as a highly accomplished person who has got many prestigious awards, including the Mahalanobis Award which is sponsored by the very same ministry who he would now serve as the secretary -- the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MoSPI).

Criticism have been heaped on official statistics by various experts ever since India switched over to the new methodology of computing gross domestic product in 2015. The criticism started abating over time, but back series data on the new base year of 2011 in 2018 gave rise to fresh doubts over the methodology from experts.  

Meanwhile, in 2019 MoSPI appointed a 28-member standing committee on statistics chaired by former chief statistician Pronab Sen. The committee will review and develop the country's surveys on employment, industry and services sector amid criticism of official statistics.

Samanta, who has been appointed for two years, will be taking calls on the committee's recommendations and many such other similar suggestions.

(With inputs from Anup Roy in Mumbai)