International politics of statistics

Everyone has heard of that popular put down of data — “lies, damned lies and statistics”. Getting people to trust official data is more difficult than collecting data. In recent years, gaps in data collection, partly on account of inadequate funding and partly because of political interference, has generated widespread distrust of statistics produced by government agencies. The Union government’s decision to postpone the decennial census has further contributed to the view that the government doesn’t want to gather data that may not serve its political purposes. The recent decision of the Union government to suspend K.S. James, director of the International Institute for Population Sciences, because of his skepticism about data relating to National Family Health Surveys, raises serious questions about the value the Modi government attaches to professionalism and due process. Economist Sonalde Desai has been at the forefront in commenting on the data controversy. In an essay (Sunday Times of India, July 30), she has made a plea for rebuilding India’s statistical system. Earlier, she had commented on the government’s response to the Global Hunger Index observing that it draws attention to the difficulties of constructing such indices and diverts attention from substantial arguments relating to statistics, their collection, and construction of indices. But the lay public is not interested in substantial arguments and only remembers numbers and country ranking. There was a time when the general public paid little attention to studies coming out of international organisations. In 1990, Nobel economist Amartya Sen, London School of Economics professor Meghnad Desai and former finance minister of Pakistan, Mahbub ul Haq, constructed the Human Development Index (HDI) and the United Nations published a Human Development Report based on the index. It successfully measures country performance not just on gross domestic product (GDP) but also on other parameters including education and health. Since then, there has not only been a proliferation of such reports coming out of various United Nations agencies but also several global non-governmental organisations. However, again these reports didn’t attract much attention because governments of the day were not seeking global approval or were irritated by disapproval. But we are now into achche din, and any sachchi baat coming from outside either excites the establishment or makes it angry. As for the HDI, the big issue in early years was India’s relative ranking compared with neighbouring countries. Although Dr. Haq was Pakistani, he was a scholar at Cambridge University, UK, and knew Amartya Sen and Manmohan Singh well. Therefore, no one accused him of any anti-India bias, even though India had a low rank. Most were satisfied that India’s rank was above Pakistan’s. During prime minister Narendra Modi’s first-term in office, the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business (EoDB) index became a hot topic because it showed a dramatic improvement in India’s rank. When the report was published in 2017, the Union government organised a celebratory event in New Delhi, inviting the World Bank’s Hungarian CEO Kristalina Georgieva. At the event, Modi praised Ms Georgieva sky-high…