Do the GDP overestimation claims of India’s former CEA stand up to statistical scrutiny? Look closely

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.In 2019, Arvind Subramanian, India’s former chief economic advisor, argued in a Harvard working paper that Indian GDP had been overestimated by 2.5 percentage points a year from 2011-12 to 2016-17. His central exhibit was a chart of 17 economic indicators, 11 of which had turned negatively correlated with GDP after 2011. The starkest case was the Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for manufacturing, at minus 0.78.Extend the data by seven years using the same method.

IIP-manufacturing now correlates with GDP at plus 0.92. The vanishing indicators: Of the 11 indicators flagged by the 2019 paper as negatively correlated, 10 have not merely turned positive, but strongly positive. The flagship of the case has reversed.In March 2026, Subramanian, Abhishek Anand and Josh Felman published a new paper under the Peterson Institute’s banner.

It claims Indian GDP has been overestimated by 1.5 to 1.9 percentage points a year. The conclusion is a close cousin of the 2019 claim; almost none of the evidence is. In his 2019 acknowledgements, Subramanian thanked Felman for “first alerting me to the issues, and helping at every stage.” Two of the three 2026 authors have been behind this research programme since before 2019.

The author list has grown; the evidence, not so much.‘Inconvenient’ indicators, 13 of the 17, have been dropped. The 2026 paper does not defend the 2019 case by testing its indicator set on extended data. It replaces it.Put less charitably, the 2019 result was window-specific.

It hinged on six years that happened to see structural changes in the Indian economy. After that window, the ‘breakdown’ reverses. Tractor production is the only holdout and it tracks monsoon rains more than