Putting lipstick on the numbers

ON THE REPUBLICAN party's campaign during the US presidential election in 2008, the Democratic party's candidate, Mr Barack Obama, said, "you can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig."

- P Chidambaram

That crushing put down became instantly famous. According to Wikipedia, the phrase has been in use since at lease the middle of the twentieth century.

I was reminded of the phrase when I heard the spin that government officers put on the NSO's estimates on India's national income released on February 28, 2023. Numbers do not lie, interpretations of the numbers lie - as we found in the weeks following the presentation of Budget 2023-24. In her Budget speech, the Hon'ble Finance Minister projected a GDP growth of 7% in 202223. Since then, government officers, including the Chief Economic Adviser, have repeated that claim. It may well turn out to be correct, but behind the alluring number of 7% lies the cold fact that, in successive quarters of 2022-23, the output has recorded a declining growth rate. According to the NSO's estimates, the growth rates in the first three quarters, year-on-year, are 13.2, 6.3 and 4.4%.

Output matters