GDP growth of 7.8% or 2.5%? Surjit Bhalla, Montek Singh Ahluwalia settle debate
These GDP numbers come out and suddenly everyone’s shouting from the rooftops? One side is cheering 7.8 percent growth in the first quarter, the other is waving papers saying it’s actually closer to 2.5 percent if you dig into the revisions. Former finance secretary Subhash Chandra Garg kicked it off by pointing out that last year’s first-quarter GDP figure had been brought down from around Rs 86 lakh crore to about Rs 80 lakh crore. Use the lower base, he said, and the growth looks much better. Nominal growth would have been under 2.5 percent without that change. Congress jumped on it, questioning the whole methodology, the deflator, the new 2022-23 base series. The government hit back saying you can’t mix old series with new series like that. So Rajdeep Sardesai pulled in a few people who actually know this stuff cold – Surjit Bhalla, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, and Neelkanth Mishra – and they sat down to sort through the noise. What came out was pretty clear on one point: none of them saw evidence that the numbers were cooked for political reasons. Bhalla was straight about it. He said he specifically went looking to see if the revisions were designed to juice up the growth rate. “I come out squarely that there is no evidence to date that we have played politics with the numbers.” When someone asked him directly about political influence on the downward revision, he didn’t hedge: “Absolutely no politics.” He pointed out something simple. If the government wanted to pad the numbers, why leave consumption looking weaker in the new data than the old one? Consumption is hard to measure properly, and it was revised lower. At the same time, independent data shows investment has gone up, and investment feeds straight into GDP. India’s national accounts people, he added, are among the most conservative statisticians he’s come across. Mishra explained the revision itself in practical terms. Fast-growing economies with a big informal sector have to reset their base and methods every few years. India had gone about a decade without a proper reset. When you bring in new surveys and new source data, the overall numbers can move up or down. You simply cannot compare the old series with the new one. Different methodology, different inputs. It’s not apples to apples. Nominal GDP was actually revised down by about 4 percent under the new series. Why would any government do that if the goal was to look stronger? A chunk of the downward revision came from services – trade, hotels, the more informal parts – where the old assumption that the informal sector tracks the formal one pretty closely no longer held as well. Ahluwalia agreed that the 2.5 or 2.6 percent alternative calculation doesn’t hold when you mix series. But he also said quarterly numbers always need a pinch of salt. They’re based on preliminary information. You can’t look at the first quarter and declare what the full year will be. He did flag a fair technical question though: why do these base changes in India tend to revise GDP down, when some other countries see upward revisions? Once the full details come out from the statistics people, economists will need to look carefully at the reasons. Still, he wasn’t buying the idea that the 7.8 percent was manufactured. On the bigger picture – has India proved the doomsayers wrong? – the views were more measured. Mishra said he had expected something around 7.5 percent for the year anyway, so 7.8 percent wasn’t a shock. Last year there were fiscal and monetary headwinds. Once those ease, growth can pick up even if the global picture stays messy. Ahluwalia put it this way: you could say the economy looks more resilient than the doomsayers claimed. Even if the full-year number settles closer to 7 percent than 7.8 percent, that would still be faster than most major developing economies. But one strong quarter is no reason to sit back. “You can’t look at these data and say, ‘I told you so.’” He wants the conversation to move from general talk about reforms to actual lists of what needs fixing – private investment, institutions, the things that determine whether growth stays high for years, not just one quarter. Prime Minister Modi did take a dig at the sceptics after the numbers came out, saying the doomsayers were doomed and India bloomed again. Fair enough for a political moment. But the economists on that roundtable kept coming back to the same place. The 7.8 percent isn’t fake. The revision process is messy because measuring a large informal economy is messy. Mixing old and new series creates confusion that looks like foul play when it isn’t. And a good quarterly print doesn’t erase the longer-term challenges – jobs, investment quality, the need for deeper reforms if the Viksit Bharat target is going to mean anything. That’s where they left it. No grand conspiracy, no reason to dismiss the growth either. Just data that needs to be read carefully, revisions that happen for technical reasons, and an economy that is performing better than the darkest forecasts but still has real work ahead. The debate will keep going, of course. These numbers always do. But the people who’ve spent careers staring at the national accounts say the politics-of-data charge doesn’t hold up this time. Sources: India Today (Anand Singh report on the Rajdeep Sardesai Roundtable, 4 September 2026); Business Today coverage of the same discussion; statements from Surjit Bhalla, Montek Singh Ahluwalia and Neelkanth Mishra during the India Today TV debate; Subhash Chandra Garg’s earlier comments on the revision; official GDP releases from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. @Rohit Manral
‘World looking at India as bright spot of growth & hope’: PM Modi at Economic Times World Leaders Forum 2026
It was one of those evenings in the capital when the air itself seemed to carry a quiet confidence. At the Economic Times World Leaders Forum 2026, held at the Taj Palace, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood before a hall packed with business leaders, investors and policymakers and said something that felt both simple and significant. The world, he told them, is looking at India as a bright spot of growth and hope. He did not rush into the line. He first spoke about the last few years — the ups and downs, the disruptions, the sense that nothing stays isolated anymore. “Whether one likes it or not,” he said, “the futures of all nations are interconnected. Nothing is possible in isolation.” India’s G20 presidency, he reminded the room, had carried the idea of One Earth, One Family, One Future. That same spirit, he felt, still had answers for the problems of this century. But the present is not easy. Resources are being turned into weapons. Mistrust is spreading. Global growth looks uncertain. And still, Modi said, the world keeps turning its gaze toward India. “Even in such times, the world views India as a bright spot of growth and hope.” He backed the claim with numbers that have become familiar yet still land with weight. In the last 10 to 12 years, about 25 crore people have moved out of poverty. The IMF continues to say India will remain the fastest-growing major economy. On Independence Day, speaking from the Red Fort, he had talked about seven streams of strength — manufacturing, agriculture and food processing, technology, the green economy, the blue economy and more. These, he said, are where the country is putting its energy. Then he turned to the idea of reform itself, and here his tone sharpened. He spoke of the old licence-raj days when companies that produced more than the allowed limit were actually punished. He called it the PLP model — Production Linked Punishment. Today the approach is the opposite. Higher production brings incentives. The government, he said, is not merely changing a few rules. It is changing the entire way regulations are thought about. The old mindset was “prohibited unless permitted.” The new one is “permitted unless prohibited.” If something is not clearly banned by law, there should be no need to keep asking for permission at every step. The relationship between government and people, he insisted, must rest on trust, not suspicion. Policies now are being shaped to be pro-people, pro-growth and pro-development. He pointed to things people actually notice in their daily lives — cheaper data, the quick spread of 5G, changes in the railways, the Delhi Metro, the Namo Rapid Rail. Small reforms on paper, he suggested, but they show a country adjusting itself to the times. Political stability and continuity of policy, he added, give the outside world the confidence that India’s direction will not suddenly reverse. The forum itself was full of people who matter in boardrooms and policy circles. More than 40 global speakers and over 300 Indian CEOs were expected across the two days. Earlier in the day, Times Internet chairman Satyan Gajwani had described Modi as a source of stability in a world that seems to lurch from one crisis to the next. The Prime Minister’s words seemed to answer that description directly. He did not pretend India is untouched by global pressures. He simply argued that the country has chosen a path of continuous reform and that the results are visible. Growth is being protected. The sectors that will matter in the years ahead are receiving focused attention. And the governing idea has shifted from control to enablement. The Economic Times World Leaders Forum continues through Saturday with conversations on technology, geopolitics and the next phase of growth. But Friday evening belonged to that single, clear assertion — that amid everything else, India stands out as a place of growth and hope. Sources: Times of India, Economic Times, ANI, ETV Bharat, New Kerala, The News Mill, Awaz The Voice, Akashvani News, and the official text of the Prime Minister’s address (August 21, 2026). @Rohit Manral