Statistics and Programme Implementation Secretary Saurabh Garg has rejected allegations that India’s latest GDP numbers have been manipulated to present a stronger picture of the economy, arguing that the is supported by a range of indicators and that critics are wrongly mixing two different GDP series.
The sharpest point of contention is the revision in the estimated size of the economy in the first quarter of the previous financial year. GDP for Q1 of 2025-26, which was around Rs 86 lakh crore under the old series, has been revised to about Rs 80 lakh crore under the new series. Critics have argued that using the earlier figure as the base would result in a much lower growth rate than the headline 7.8%.
Garg rejected that argument and said the revision had nothing to do with an attempt to make the latest growth number look better.
Asked whether India was overstating its economic performance or presenting a rosier picture of the economy by compromising the integrity of its GDP data, Garg said, “Not at all.”
He said the latest growth figure was backed by several indicators from the real economy, including manufacturing and services PMI, electricity generation, cement and steel output, consumption and a range of services.
“The 7.8% that has come out as a growth figure for Q1 is only corroborated by a number of real economy figures,” Garg said.
He pointed to electricity growth of around 9%, cement and steel growth of about 8%, and growth of roughly 15-20% in several services sectors, including hotels, tourism and trade. Electrical equipment grew 27%, he said, while capital goods expanded 12%. Private consumption expenditure was close to 8%.
“I’m surprised that these 7.8% figures, which are corroborated by the real economy data, are being questioned,” Garg said.
The controversy over the growth figure has focused heavily on the change in the GDP base year from 2011-12 to 2022-23. The new series, introduced earlier this year, incorporates changes in the structure of the economy, updated statistical methods and newer sources of data.
Garg said changing the base year was a routine statistical exercise rather than something unique to the latest GDP release. India has revised its GDP base several times over the past seven decades, including in 1999-2000, 2004-05 and 2011-12.
“The economic structure of the economy changes,” Garg said, explaining that products that were significant in an earlier period can become less important while new products and sectors emerge.
He also pointed to the availability of data that simply did not exist when the previous GDP series was prepared.
“Digital India has ensured a digitisation of the economy. GST has been introduced,” he said, while also citing the Public Financial Management System and other administrative datasets.
Those changes have affected historical GDP estimates as well as the latest numbers.
According to Garg, Q1 FY25 GDP was around Rs 79 lakh crore under the old series but became about Rs 74 lakh crore under the revised series. Q1 FY26, earlier estimated at around Rs 86 lakh crore, became approximately Rs 80 lakh crore.
The latest Q1 FY27 estimate is around Rs 88 lakh crore at current prices.
Garg said the figures that should be compared are therefore Rs 74 lakh crore for Q1 FY25, Rs 80 lakh crore for Q1 FY26 and Rs 88 lakh crore for Q1 FY27, all calculated using the revised methodology.
“Whenever a comparison has to be done, you need to compare apples to apples rather than apples to oranges,” he said.
The timing of the revision is also central to the government’s defence. Garg stressed that the Rs 80 lakh crore estimate was not produced immediately before the latest quarterly GDP release. The revised historical figures were released in February 2026, he said, when the current quarter’s GDP estimate was not yet available.
Critics have nonetheless focused on the fact that the lower revised base makes the latest increase look substantially larger than it would under the old series.
Garg said that continuing the old series could theoretically have produced a Q1 FY27 GDP figure in the range of Rs 93-95 lakh crore. But he stressed that such a number would be speculative because the old series has been discontinued.
“I’m entering an area of speculation because wrong comparisons are being done,” he said.
The dispute has also drawn attention to the GDP deflator and the apparent divergence between GDP inflation and headline CPI and WPI inflation.
Garg said GDP is calculated at both current prices and constant prices, with the latter intended to strip out price changes and capture changes in actual economic output. But he said it would be incorrect to assume that a single headline inflation measure is simply deducted from nominal GDP to arrive at real growth.
“WPI focusses on inflation of goods. 55% of the economy is services, and services, CPI, is a better indicator of that,” he said.
The revised methodology uses a much broader set of price indicators, including producer-price data and more than 300 individual values to account for price changes across different components of the economy.
The distinction is particularly important in manufacturing, where Garg said input prices have risen much faster than the prices manufacturers have been able to charge consumers.
Manufacturers are facing higher costs for steel, plastics and other mineral- and petroleum-based inputs, he said, but companies have not necessarily been able to pass those costs on to customers.
“On the output side, corporates have not been able to pass on those price increases to the final customers,” Garg said.
He used the example of a manufacturer whose inputs previously cost Rs 60 for a product sold for Rs 100. If input costs rise to Rs 80 or Rs 85 while the selling price remains at Rs 100, the nominal value added gets squeezed sharply even though the underlying output may remain strong.
“So, when we look at constant prices, the value added is 40 rupees but when we look at current prices, the value added is only 15,” Garg said.
That, he said, explains how manufacturing can show a negative deflator even when input prices are rising.
The government has introduced greater use of separate input and output price measures in the new GDP methodology, including double deflation for manufacturing, in an effort to better measure real value added.
Garg also sought to draw a line under concerns that the new GDP series could result in similarly large revisions every year.
He said the major changes arising from the rebasing, the changing structure of the economy, new data sources and updated methodology had already been incorporated.
Future revisions will still happen as more corporate and government data becomes available, but he expects them to be relatively small.
“Normally, these changes are not significantly different. There could be 10, 20, 30 basis points up or down and that is what we normally expect,” he said.
The broader question of whether India’s official statistics face a credibility problem also came up during the interview. Garg rejected the suggestion outright.
“The short answer is absolutely not,” he said.
He said the revised methodology had been developed after consultations with economists, experts and forecasters and discussions with international institutions including the IMF and the United Nations.
Garg also defended the scale of India’s statistical machinery and the increasing use of digital administrative data.
“The data sources that we have are among the most exhaustive that any country has,” he said, pointing to UPI, GST, VAHAN and the Public Financial Management System.
He said the government’s statistical system also relies on extensive field-level data collection.
“We have a field force of 10,000 people who go house to house, enterprise to enterprise, collect data week after week,” Garg said.
The statistics secretary’s defence ultimately rests on a straightforward proposition. The 7.8% growth figure, he argues, should be measured against the revised Q1 FY26 base of Rs 80 lakh crore and not the Rs 86 lakh crore estimate from the discontinued series.
That does not settle the wider debate over what India’s headline GDP growth means for jobs, investment and household incomes. Garg himself acknowledged that employment quality is a separate issue from the unemployment rate, with skills, industry requirements, technology and broader economic uncertainty all shaping the jobs market.
But on the immediate controversy over the GDP numbers, Garg was unequivocal. The Rs 6 lakh crore revision, he said, reflects an overhaul of the statistical series and better data, not an attempt to manufacture a higher growth rate.