Recently, there has been recognition of efforts “re-establishing the credibility of India’s foremost economic indicator, GDP”. This is indeed heartening for all the people who selflessly soil their hands to ensure that the productive output of the economy is measured. The ‘much maligned’ Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) has refreshingly been commended for releasing various pending surveys, engaging data users through public seminars and sensitising them to the changes they can look forward to in the upcoming new series on national accounts.Building the broadest understanding of what is measured has always been the endeavour of this tribe, right from the 1930s when the British economist and statistician Colin Clark and the American economist Simon Kuznets developed the concept of GDP as we know it today. It was adopted as the main measure of a country’s economy at the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, which spawned the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
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