Data conundrum: Is NSO really the answer to India's statistical confusions?

India already has a National Statistical Commission as the nodal agency for core statistical activities. Will a new National Statistical Office do that better? Experts differ in their views

On the very first working day of its second successive five-year term, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government owned up some of the key statistics that had raised some questions earlier this year over economic performance in its previous term in office. So, are the controversies about the numbers clearly behind us now? The supposed embarrassment within government circles about facing general elections with such data does not exist anymore.

The answers matter; the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (Mospi) a week earlier proposed the creation of a National Statistical Office (NSO) through a merger of the Central Statistics