Postpone data surveys

CAA protests can undermine credibility of statistics

India faces data-quality issues at various levels and, often, numbers come with a significant lag. This delays policy interventions. The problem of reliable economic statistics is likely to get more acute now. The issue, which was till now limited to acceptance and release of survey results by the government, has reached a stage where data collection itself is becoming a problem. As a report in this newspaper showed last week, the government might have to postpone socio-economic surveys because people are not cooperating with surveyors. The fear is that the government might use the information to determine citizenship.

Consequently, an