One way to look at the new series is as a shift from a grainy image to a higher-resolution one. The scene itself does not suddenly change, but the blur is reduced.
First, the revised framework relies more heavily on richer administrative data. Instead of depending mainly on infrequent surveys and broad indicators, it draws more systematically on modern digital records, such as GST-linked information, to capture activity signals with greater timeliness and coverage.
Second, the new system measures the everyday economy more dynamically. India’s household and unincorporated sectors — small firms, self-employment, local trade, and services — are large and constantly evolving. Rather than stretching old benchmarks for long periods, the new series incorporates regular surveys and labour force data more consistently, improving responsiveness to structural change.
Third, consumption measurement has been modernised to better reflect what households actually consume today. Private consumption estimates now adopt the latest available COICOP 2018 (Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose) classification and combine multiple estimation methods, improving comparability and internal coherence.
Fourth, the revision strengthens reconciliation between production and expenditure. A persistent challenge in GDP compilation is the gap between what the economy produces and what it spends. Greater integration of the “Supply and Use Tables” framework is intended to narrow this discrepancy by ensuring that industry-level supply aligns more closely with consumption, investment and trade.
None of this eliminates uncertainty. In a large, diverse economy where many activities are imperfectly recorded, no statistical system can capture reality without noise. Data quality, compliance gaps, and unavoidable lags between real activity and measurement remain constraints. The right benchmark is not perfection but whether the system becomes more transparent, comprehensive, and internally consistent over time. By that standard, this rebasing represents a meaningful improvement.
Under the new series, real GDP growth in FY25 appears stronger than under the old framework. This does not mean the economy performed better in hindsight, but that earlier methods struggled to cleanly separate price effects from volume effects, particularly in manufacturing. When input costs — energy, raw materials, logistics — rise sharply, simple deflators can misread margin compression as weaker real output. More refined deflation practices and improved quarterly benchmarking reduce the risk of confusing cost pressures with a slowdown in real activity.
The same logic applies to services. Many modern services — digital platforms, logistics, financial intermediation — do not behave like traditional goods. Prices, fees, and margins can shift quickly without a proportional change in service volumes. Better classification and data use help ensure that measured growth reflects actual expansion of activity.
Are the new numbers closer to ground reality? More so than before. They rest on better scaffolding: Newer surveys, broader administrative records, improved benchmarking, and tighter production-expenditure reconciliation. But GDP alone cannot capture lived experience. If households feel squeezed despite growth, the reasons may lie in distribution, job quality, inflation composition, or sectoral unevenness — dimensions GDP is not designed to measure. The value of rebasing is that it improves the starting point for those debates: A more credible national accounts framework, clearer sector mapping, and stronger internal consistency.
The author is global chief economist, Dun & Bradstreet. Views are personal
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