My third fundamental concern relates to the reliability or otherwise of statistics and the information on which the entire national income accounting, budgeting and economic planning is taking place. Despite some visible improvement in data collection and classification, there are serious flaws in the system at all levels that cast doubt on some of the data relating to production estimates in different fields of the economy, particularly agriculture, labour and employment statistics and the entire exercise about poverty-count. Absence of alternate sources of information, independent of government control and influence is another worry.
