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The report of an expert committee set up by the National Statistical Commission (NSC), which has worked out a back series for economic growth from 1994-95 using the new methodology and base year adopted in 2015, has had an unintended consequence. It has silenced all critics of the new methodology. How? The report of the Committee on Real Sector Statistics headed by Sudipto Mundle shows that growth during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) years was not as bad as it was being made to be. In fact, from 2004-05 onwards, growth calculated by the new methodology was higher than that calculated by the old methodology. To recap, in 2015 the base year for calculating GDP was changed from financial year 2004-05 to financial year 2011-12 and the earlier system of measuring GDP at factor cost was discarded in favour of measuring it by gross value added (GVA) at basic prices. What is particularly stark is the fact that growth in 2006-07 actually touched 10 percent (10.08 percent to be exact) against 9.57 percent when calculated under the old methodology. The Congress has been quick to brandish these numbers as proof of how the economy boomed during the UPA tenure and how the first four years of the Narendra Modi government are anaemic in comparison. Recall that till now the party and its cheerleaders had lost no opportunity to question the new methodology, even though it bumped up growth in the last two years of the UPA from sub-five percent under the old series to 5.5 percent in fiscal 2012-13 and 6.4 percent in fiscal 2013-14). The party has also maintained that if growth under the Modi government were to be estimated on the basis of the old methodology, it would be much lower. Is it now ready to concede the 7.3 percent average of the last four years? No doubt, the demand will now be raised that the approach used by the Mundle committee be adopted to work out the back series. But this may not be as pat an exercise as it appears. Back series calculations are always done to link a new series of national accounts with an old series. This gives a better comparison of growth over the years. Doing this has been complicated this time around because of the change in methodology (which now conforms to the best global practices) – some of the data used under the new methodology is not available for earlier years. The MCA-21 data, for example, is not available beyond 2007-08. The Mundle committee has listed three approaches to generating the back series: use the current methodology using base data wherever available; a production shift approach; project the old series using

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