Trust no one

Reactions to the better-than-expected growth numbers for the April-June quarter seem a bit subdued, right? Here’s why: the government’s frequent revisions of its data, some of them very large indeed — as Mint pointed out recently, GDP growth for the post-Lehman quarter has been revised downwards to 3.5 per cent from 5.9 per cent, years after the fact. There is little accountability for past errors; and so there is little trust in new claims. And, sadly, this is true of more than just government statisticians.

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