Think before bandying a baseless GDP figure about

livemint.com:

A social media post with a GDP tracker that shows India’s economy having attained $4 trillion in size has found its way to the political arena, with ruling party leaders, including a Union minister, holding it up as evidence of economic success, even as the opposition questions the data’s veracity. With that size, India is shown to have narrowed the gap with Germany and Japan, which India is poised to overtake and become the world’s third-largest economy.

Their GDP is pegged at $4.3 trillion and $4.4 trillion, respectively. The figure’s source is unclear.

Neither the National Statistical Office nor finance ministry put it out. Official GDP estimates are a complex exercise, with numbers going through a series of revisions, and it will be some time before we can say that our economy as usually measured has reached that size.

If it has a ring of truth, it’s because India’s economy was earlier in the news for having crossed the $3 trillion mark. Such figures are often cited to impress people.

But since our population is thought to be about a billion-and-a-half, it’s also possible they remind us of how small India’s economy is on a per-head basis. And data casualness doesn’t help relieve that realization.