World Bank Executive Director for India Neelkanth Mishra has warned over questioning the credibility of India's Q1 GDP data, saying claims of manipulation are “absolutely wrong” and only create unnecessary uncertainty.
In an exclusive interaction with NDTV Profit, Mishra said, "acsribing bad intent or manipulation on GDP numbers, is I think very detrimental." He added that the debate on GDP numbers "are waste of time " and "more importantly they just add uncertainty and I dont think it is wise."
Mishra's remarks come after former Finance and Economic Affairs Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg raised doubts over whether India's headline GDP growth of 7.8% for the April-June quarter (Q1 FY27) accurately reflects the pace of economic activity. According to Garg, GDP should also be estimated in current prices, before adjusting for inflation. By using the previous year's base for the same quarter, nominal GDP growth came under 2.5%, he noted, against the 10.3% nominal growth. Some critics also questioned the need to revise base series.
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Defending the revision of base series, Mishra argued, "In economies like India where there is rapid growth and a high degree of informality, there is a need to keep on revising the series." According to him, each new GDP series is based on a fresh input data, along with significant improvements in methodology, which can lead to differences because the underlying data has changed.
Speaking on why people still raise concerns over about bad roads, pollution and other civic issues despite 7.8% growth, he noted, India is lower middle income economy. The snapshot of India on these metrics is going to look ugly for the next 15-20 years, he said. He empahised on focus on the pace of change and growth follows this pace
Mishra had earlier dismissed concerns on GPD calculations earlier In a post on X, he said fiscal headwinds are fading and monetary headwinds, namely slowing credit growth through the first half of FY26 (April 2025-March 2026), are turning into tailwinds as credit growth accelerates. This should push consensus trend-growth estimates toward 7% and above, with the economy capable of registering 7.5% growth even under a neutral fiscal and monetary policy stance, he said.
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