Data fundamentalism: The rise of data self-censorship thresholds in India

Thomas Piketty’s magnum opus ‘Capital in the Twenty-First Century’ and his later works popularised the notion of ‘top 1% income quintile’ and estimated income inequality in the context of India. He used a combination of income tax data and the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CES) of the national sample survey rounds data (NSSO) to arrive at these estimates and triggered a debate on the rising income inequality in India.

The income tax data was released in October 2019 by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT). However, the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has decided “not to release the CES results of 2017-18” in view of “data quality issues” in a statement. It was also reported that the ministry is “separately examining the feasibility of conducting the next CES in 2020-21 and 2021-22 after incorporating all data quality refinements in the survey process.” The income inequality estimation is just one exercise of many such empirical analysis using this CES data. As Somesh Jha of Business Standard tweeted, “This will be the first time in India’s history that an official survey report will be scrapped without it being made public.”