There is enormous fight going on in India about which data is right and the government has a particular view that all data that is inconvenient to it is wrong. 

Nonetheless, I think that this is something that I think even the government is increasingly recognising that there is a problem. So the economy slowing very very fast. How fast we don’t know, there is this dispute about data but I think fast.

Abhijit Banerjee, who was the joint winner of the award with his wife Esther Duflo and Harvard’s Michael Kremer, also pointed the warning signs everyone should be wary of. 

The fact that we see in that is that between 2014-15 and 2017-18, that the average consumption in urban and rural areas has slightly gone down. And that’s the first time such a thing has happened in many many many many many years so that’s a very glaring warning sign.

Meanwhile Scroll reported Mr. Banerjee as saying that in India, some new policies are announced because they ‘sound good’ or have a political purpose.

It is noteworthy that both Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo were among many scientists from across the world who signed an appeal for data transparency in India in 2019.