India's latest GDP growth figure of 7.8% — above the forecast 7% — has reignited a long-running dispute over the reliability of the country's official economic data. A former finance secretary under Prime Minister Narendra Modi alleged the figure was artificially inflated through downward revisions to the prior year's baseline, putting real growth closer to 2.6%, a claim that went viral and prompted widespread debate. The controversy reflects a deeper concern among economists and former officials: that India's statistical institutions have been gradually undermined over the past decade through methodology changes, delayed surveys, and the suppression of inconvenient findings — most notably a 2019 unemployment report showing joblessness at a 45-year high that the government initially refused to publish. The stakes are practical as well as political; with nearly 40% of graduates under 25 unemployed and an estimated 100 million people potentially missing out on food subsidies due to an overdue national census, analysts warn that flawed data leads directly to flawed policy.