Work on a new base year will start the moment the government starts releasing key economic data such as the Wholesale Price Index (WPI) and the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) with 2004-05 as the reference point within a few months. The National Statistical Commission (NSC), under C. Rangarajan, has recommended that the base year be updated every five years. Officials in the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (Mospi) say...

‘Beggar type.’ Like most of us, Smita Jacob had never come across that pithy official phrase before. It’s a classification in the records of the police of New Delhi, India’s richest city, used to describe a dead homeless person whose death is too insignificant to investigate. The police are as sensitive as you and I to the cripple on the pavement, the child at the car window. They mean no...

The revised estimates of national income by the Central Statistical Organisation for 2009-10 present a generally positive picture of the economy. During the year, the economy grew by 7.4 per cent, marginally higher than the 7.2 per cent projected in February's advance estimates. A better-than-expected 8.6 per cent growth during the fourth quarter is the main reason. Industry has been a star performer. The strong performance of the crucial segments...

Drought impacted agricultural production but not farm incomes.  The year 2009-10 was supposedly a bad year for Indian agriculture, given the worst ever monsoon since 1972. This is partly reflected in the 0.2 per cent growth registered by the farm sector (inclusive of forestry and fishing) in real terms, as per the Central Statistical Organisation's latest revised estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) for last fiscal. The virtual stagnation in agricultural output...

ON May 31, when the government announces GDP numbers for 2009-10, for the first time, factories would contribute more to the national income than the country’s farmers, marking a significant shift in the structure of the India economy. That does not, however, diminish the importance of the farm, fisheries and the forest sector because of the disproportionately high percentage of people still engaged in these activities. Neither does it take...