Wanted: A professional statistical set-up

Errors, both of omission and commission, by the government of India’s statistics-economics fraternity has led to a grave situation. The net result is that long-term policy formulation has now largely gone blind. At the micro level, this situation has arisen where both growth and employment don’t have historically comparable data. All that we at best know is whether we are doing better or worse than the past, and the robustness of even those claims is debateable. Moreover, we know little on the components and the character of the massive economic change that is occurring in India. As a consequence, policy can now no longer be assessed or formulated in an informed manner, and so what we are left with are