Even as the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) presses ahead with the use of alternative sources of data in India’s official statistics, the NITI Aayog has asked if the ministry should even be engaging with such data sets.
Speaking on Thursday at the start of a two-day workshop on ‘Using Alternate Data Sources and Frontier Technologies for Policy Making’, NITI Aayog Vice-Chairman Suman Bery questioned if these new areas should be a priority for MoSPI and cautioned that they should “not become an all-consuming task or preoccupation”, although he added that using new data sources and technologies is “very powerful” as it helps give a sense about the direction in which the economy is headed in a fast-moving world for real-time interventions.
“I would also make the point that to some extent the issue of whether all of this should be going on in MoSPI and in the statistical infrastructure or whether it should be going on in our rich network of think tanks is, I think, an appropriate issue. For example, NCAER… has a centre for data analytics,” Bery said.
New Delhi-based think-tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) set up a National Data Innovation Centre in 2017 to serve as a “laboratory for experiments in data collection”, among other objectives.
OTT, others in CPI
Meanwhile, speaking at the same workshop, MoSPI Secretary Saurabh Garg said alternate data sources and frontier technology have “reached a stage that we can actually use it for official statistics” and that this augured well for the future of data analysis. In an interview to The Indian Express, published on Thursday, Garg had said the Statistics Ministry is looking to use data from sources such as online booking platforms for air and rail fares and over-the-top (OTT) streaming services, among others, for the new Consumer Price Index (CPI) series that will be released in early 2026.
“For the new CPI series, MoSPI is expanding its approach by exploring alternative data sources, such as online platforms for airfare, rail fare, OTT platforms and administrative records for price data of petrol, diesel and LPG. Discussions are ongoing with IRCTC, under the Ministry of Railways, and the PPAC under the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas for direct transfer of data for integration in CPI,” Garg said.
MoSPI is in the process of revising its key macroeconomic indicators — CPI, the Index of Industrial Production (IIP), and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Apart from updating the base years to 2022-23 for GDP and IIP, and 2024 for CPI, the revision exercise will also see changes in methodology used to compute the indicators. In addition, the updated CPI series will be based on a new basket of goods and services as per the findings of MoSPI’s recent Household Consumption Expenditure Survey. This could result in near-obsolete items such as audio casettes being removed from the CPI basket, with prices of more contemporary goods like treadmills being used in the measurement of retail inflation.
‘Intelligent integration’
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Chief Economic Adviser V Anantha Nageswaran, also speaking at the workshop, pushed for the use of alternative data in official statistics. While surveys, administrative, and national accounts data remain indispensable as inputs in making decisions, the pace, complexity, and granularity required by modern policymaking and the challenges attached to them “have exposed limitations in both the periodicity and dimensionality of such data,” he said.
According to Nageswaran, alternative data such as satellite-based night-time luminosity — used as a proxy for economic activity in areas with delayed or weak statistical reporting — and other satellite data can help policymakers monitor industrial activity, road connectivity, and cropping patterns, among others. “These insights can inform timely decisions on input provisioning, crop insurance payouts, and regional procurement strategies,” he said. These new types of data capture emergent behaviour, respond faster to shocks, and reflect the “lived experience of economic agents in ways that conventional aggregates sometimes cannot,” he added.
However, the government’s top economist warned that while alternative data can help policymakers move from “retrospective diagnostics to proactive intervention”, they could not replace official statistics and warranted “intelligent integration”.
“Therefore, the mature approach is not to choose between official and alternative data but to design systems where each informs and validates the other, especially in environments where timely action is crucial,” Nageswaran said, adding that enthusiasm must be tempered with prudence as official data still carried a “certain higher sense of authenticity and reliability and accuracy given the years of usage and in-built checks and balances”.
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With reference to frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence, Nageswaran said the “black box nature of certain algorithms, the potential for bias embedded in training data, and risks to individual privacy must be actively mitigated through robust governance frameworks”. Further, these technologies should be deployed in a way that they are tailored to institutional absorption capacity. “A well-designed algorithm is only as effective as the human systems interpreting and acting upon its output,” the chief economic adviser said.