Letter: Dark statistics

Given the fact that less than 1 per cent of rural households in some West Bengal districts like Purulia, Bankura and Paschim Medinipur get power supply and this percentage is unlikely to exceed 10 per cent even in leading districts like Hooghly and Burdwan, it was shocking to read that West Bengal has topped in Eastern India with a 99.6 per cent rural electrification (“East India lags in rural electrification: PwC report”, January 5).

On enquiry, it was learnt that a village is counted as “electrified” once power lines are brought to it, even though less than 1 per cent of houses may be getting power supply. By selecting such a curious criterion for counting villages as “electrified”, who are we trying to fool and why?

At a gathering of leading IT scientists, professors and students of West Bengal at Kalamandir on January 5, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya claimed that the state is doing better than Karnataka, Andhra Pradesha and others because the drop in its percentage of IT exports during the global economic crisis was less than that of the leading states — he totally ignored the fact that West Bengal’s share of IT exports is a mere 3 per cent.

The adage “Lies, damn lies and statistics” is all too true.

Alok Sarkar, Kolkata