India's data credibility problem – and why that matters

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15-06-2025

Eighty-two persons died in the stampede during the Maha Kumbh pilgrimage in Uttar Pradesh's Prayagraj in January – not 37 as the government claimed, the BBC reported on Tuesday.
This was not the first time the media has claimed that the actual toll could be much higher than the figure that had been announced.
The findings, if accurate, would reinforce concerns about a trend of data published by the Indian government that seems to be false or erroneous.
For instance, on May 7, data published by the civil registration system revealed that India had recorded at least 37.4 lakh excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 compared to 2018 and 2019, the two years preceding the Covid-19 pandemic.
Excess deaths refers to the difference between the total number of deaths during a pandemic or a natural disaster compared to the number of deaths that would have been expected under normal conditions.
The Opposition cited this data to allege that the Narendra Modi government ' systematically underreported ' Covid-19 deaths.
While the Indian government claimed 5.3 lakh people died of Covid-19 till date, this would put the real toll seven times higher.
Similar questions have also been asked on the economic front for several years. In March 2024, former Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian said that the government's gross domestic product growth numbers did not add up and were 'mystifying'.
However, the concern is not just about deaths being allegedly hidden or data being dressed up. In some cases, the data is outdated or completely absent.
One reason for the scarcity of official data in several key areas is that the decennial census that had been held uninterrupted since 1881 did not take place in 2021 because of the pandemic. Curiously, the government postponed the exercise even though elections took place in several states during the pandemic.
The 2011 data being used by the world's most populous country to make policy making is long out of date.
The government does not accurately know where Indians now live.
Several welfare programmes, the public distribution system that provides subsided food to crores of people, and pension and housing schemes rely on census data to reach beneficiaries. By using data collected one-and-a-half-decade ago, millions of persons are being potentially excluded from accessing their entitlements.
This leads to another problem. As Scroll highlighted in January 2023, the void left by the scarcity of official statistics has led to privately collected data gaining prominence, even as the government alleges that it is flawed.
While the government has said that the census – which will include caste enumeration – will conclude in 2027 after a six-year delay, the full details are expected to be available only nine months after the data is collected.
Here is a summary of the week's top stories.
Aviation disaster. At least 265 people died when an Air India plane bound for London crashed moments after taking off from Ahmedabad. Only one of the 241 people on board survived and was being treated at a hospital.
The aircraft's crash into the hostel building of a medical college also killed at least four students on the ground. While the toll on the ground remains unclear, a police inspector said that 265 bodies have been sent for post-mortem.
The crash took place moments after the flight captain issued a Mayday distress call to the air traffic controller, with communication lost thereafter. This is being described as the world's worst aviation disaster in a decade and the first fatal crash involving a Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft.
Conducive to escalation. The Israeli military launched strikes on what it claimed were nuclear targets and also other sites in Iran with an aim of stalling the country's nuclear programme. Iran retaliated with missile attacks on Israel.
The Israeli Defense Forces hit sites in the capital Tehran, Kermanshah and Tabriz, among other cities. Iran's main nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz was among the targets that were hit.
Iranian military chief Mohammad Bagheri and Hossein Salami, the chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were killed in the attack. While other casualties were being reported in Tehran, the numbers were not clear.
Claiming that Iran was 'closer than ever to obtaining' a nuclear weapon, Tel Aviv said that it had 'no choice but to fulfil the obligation to act in defence of its citizens'. Iran has for long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.
Mumbai's local train woes. Four persons died after falling off a suburban train near Mumbra in Maharashtra's Thane district. Thirteen were injured, according to a surgeon at the district hospital. The incident took place on fast train tracks between Mumbra and Diva.
A Central Railways spokesperson said that the accident was suspected to have taken place as passengers travelling on footboards in trains in opposite directions 'got entangled'.
Last year, Mumbai's suburban train network recorded 2,468 deaths, or more than six fatalities every day.
Also on Scroll this week