BUSINESSLINE

SUMMARY

Every policy, budget, and economic forecast rests on one foundational number — Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But what if that number is wrong? What if we’ve been underestimating the true size of India’s economy for years, especially at the local level? Despite our national obsession with growth, the methods we use to calculate GDP, particularly at the district level, are outdated, top-heavy, and often blind to ground realities. In this article, we explore how recent evidence from Uttar Pradesh reveals massive discrepancies between reported and actual economic output and argue that it’s time India rethinks how it counts its economy, starting from the grassroots up.

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