Why has official Indian data on informal enterprises been kept under wraps?

livemint.com:

Measuring India’s manufacturing sector remains a data challenge,’ Mint, 15 May 2023). Speaking to The Economist recently, India’s former chief statistician Pronab Sen argued that the old GDP series (2004-05 base year) may have captured real growth rates more accurately. Sen had earlier suggested that India’s recent GDP figures were likely to be overestimated because of how informal-sector growth was accounted for.

Since the current series uses formal-sector proxies for it, in the event of asynchronous shocks, mis-estimates are likely. In another interview, Sen argued that our post-pandemic recovery has been much slower for the informal sector. Another former chief statistician has expressed disagreement with Sen’s view.

Writing in Mint, TCA Anant argued that the official growth figures may in fact be underestimating informal sector growth (‘India’s informal sector could be adding more value than we know,’). Anant marshalled wage data from the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) to suggest that the informal sector has been buoyant. Two former officials of the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (Mospi), Sanjay Kumar and N.K.

Sharma challenged Anant’s conclusions, since they were based on nominal wages (without adjustments for inflation). Once nominal wages are adjusted for inflation, wage data indicates “stagnation" rather than buoyancy, they wrote (‘The performance of the informal sector demands in-depth analysis’). Till recently, India lacked an annual survey of informal firms.