World Bank's Neelkanth Mishra lashes out at India GDP critics as 'ill-educated and egregiously wrong'
Neelkanth Mishra, India's Executive Director at the World Bank, on Thursday lashed out at the “ill-educated and egregiously wrong claims made by some” that if the 'original' base of June-2025 quarter was used, India’s GDP growth in the June-2026 quarter would be much lower.
Mishra’s comments on social media platform X were apparently aimed at former Finance Secretary Subhash Chandra Garg who had questioned India's GDP growth at 7.8 per cent for Q1 FY27, saying that it needs a closer scrutiny because the base year used to calculate the growth has changed.
Mishra rebutted such claims, saying the new GDP series “introduced in Feb-2026 cleaned up the data and also significantly improved the methodology. For those who track this for a living (and I used to be one such till 45 days ago), the downward revision in the base was known in March”.
The new series increased credibility of estimates of real output, he added.
“That claim is so obviously wrong that several logical rebuttals have already been made. But bad information tends to travel further than good information, and so it is important to reiterate and reinforce the argument,” said Mishra.
While June-quarter data was strong, that momentum picked up - personal vehicle (cars, SUVs) dispatches grew 35 per cent YoY in August despite just 9 per cent growth in exports. Even two-wheeler growth is now more than 20 per cent (though helped by strong exports).
“And if that was consumption, commercial vehicle dispatches grew >40 per cent. Tax collection growth has picked up meaningfully. This is as real as it gets. Credit growth continues to surprise the upside (albeit on a low base). Last year, most believed the then-weak credit growth was a demand problem, whereas we steadfastly stated it was a supply issue - it has for now been addressed. Indicators of construction are robust,” Mishra explained.
He further posted that now there will be fewer people asking, "why private sector investment is weak," given that there is clear evidence of investments.
“That said, there is still a slack in the economy, as seen in weak real-wage growth. It may take several quarters of above-trend growth for that slack to tighten, and bring back sticky inflation pressures,” said Mishra.
The government has already refuted the claim that last year's current GDP for Q1 has been revised down from Rs 86 lakh crore to Rs 80 lakh crore, to make current year's GDP for the first quarter to look better and if this was not done, the growth would have been 2.6 per cent in current prices.
The Q1 GDP for 2026-27 has been estimated with the new series based on 2022-23 as the base year and therefore cannot be compared with the Rs 86 lakh crore figure for the Q1 of 2025-26, which formed part of the old series that has 2011-12 as the base year. A valid comparison can be made only with the Rs 80 lakh crore figure based on the new series data with 2022-23 as the base year, said the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI).
