The government is upset with the estimates of the World Health Organisation (WHO) about how many Indians died because of the pandemic. India’s official Covid-19 death count in 2020 and 2021 is 481,000. The WHO puts India’s death toll at 4.7 million till the end of 2021—almost 10 times the official count. The government’s main grouse is that WHO used mathematical modelling based on data from some states to estimate India’s death data. It says the organisation should instead have relied on the official count as captured by the country’s Civil Registration System (CRS) data.
The government says that given the vast geography of the country and the fact that different states had different mortality rates, the WHO methodology was bound to be incorrect. According to WHO, the government said it did not have updated data when they asked for it—indeed the CRS 2020 was released only after the world body had finished its exercise. And even the CRS 2020 is likely to be revised as different states update their data. After all, the CRS depends on data sent by states, and these are revised over time.
Finally, the WHO count includes deaths both directly and indirectly caused because of the pandemic. It takes excess deaths over what should have been the normal trend. The government counts Covid-19 deaths as those where this was listed as the cause by the hospital treating the patient.
WHO numbers might well be an overestimation. But then, India’s official data on deaths is also hardly as robust as the government claims it is. First, the CRS is data on deaths that have been registered, and not every death. The government claims death registrations in India in 2020 was 99.9%. But that seems unlikely because the CRS 2020 itself says only 11 states have achieved 90% death registrations while others have less. The National Family Health Survey 2019–21 puts death registrations in India at 71%. And several senior statisticians in the country hold the view that a different exercise—the Sample Registration System (SRS)—which relies on a survey-based process to estimate deaths and births in the country is more accurate.
The pandemic had created a major problem in counting deaths. The creaky registration systems in many states were completely overwhelmed during the worst waves of the pandemic. Even the better states faced major issues. Many states revised data drastically much later after initially reporting moderate numbers. Claims for pandemic death compensation in all states have been far higher than official counts.
Many organisations have tried to estimate the real numbers of pandemic deaths in India. The estimates have ranged from 3 million to over 6 million. The WHO report is an outlier but most estimates so far have been far higher than India’s official count.
It is not just India’s pandemic death counts where exact data is unavailable. Even the total number of people who died because of the virus across the globe has been estimated differently by different organisations. Estimating the total global numbers is fraught with difficulty because there are several dozen underdeveloped countries that have extremely bad record-keeping systems.
But India is a big economy and that is why the huge difference between the official numbers and those estimated by different organisations has caused so much controversy.
Keeping the WHO pandemic death estimates aside, the bigger issue that has cropped up time and again is the reliability of India’s official numbers in many areas. Controversies have cropped up in official estimates of unemployment, poverty and even GDP growth revisions.
The Indian government’s statistics collection and analysis system, set up shortly after Independence, was once held up as a model that could be emulated by other new nations. Over the years, though, it has failed to keep pace with the needs of the Indian economy and population growth. The statistical department is under-resourced. It is also not completely free from government interference.
Good, high frequency data in the key areas of the economy is crucial for good policymaking. With the size and complexity of the economy growing, India’s official statistical system needs a major overhaul and far more resources. Its mandate also needs to change. The National Statistical Commission (NSC) had given comprehensive recommendations several years ago on improving India’s data collection and analysis. How many of them have actually been implemented is not clear.
The rapid digitisation of almost every aspect of administration should theoretically have made accurate data collection and analysis easier. Even analysis of large surveys should take less time given the modern tools available today. But too often by the time the data is analysed and available, it is already obsolete.
The Indian government’s response to unflattering estimates by global agencies in everything from hunger to pandemic deaths to unemployment has been to rubbish the data. Except for the periodic labour force survey (PLFS) to measure employment, it has not moved to improve the other surveys or institute new ones that can help give better insights on the economy.
The government needs to understand that better official statistics are required not just to counter estimates by global agencies. It is required for better policymaking and managing the economy.
Senior business journalist