1 - A Nation in Numbers

Summary

Chapter 1 reveals how India’s statistical infrastructure was built and establishes its link to planning. It tracks the early career of P. C. Mahalanobis and the institution he founded in Calcutta (the Indian Statistical Institute) to describe the ascent of statistics as an academic discipline in India, and its growing association with applied economics. This was the period that produced organizations such as the Central Statistical Organization and the National Sample Survey, both of which persist and remain significant to policy making to this day. It was also during this phase that India first began periodic assessments of national income (a precursor to the GDP) and nationwide sample surveys that delivered high-definition snapshots of the economy. The chapter argues that this national statistical framework—pioneering among developing nations and a global trailblazer in large sample surveys—emerged as a response to the quantitative needs of centralized economic planning.