We Should Prepare Our Indices Based, On Real Ground Level Situation: Goyal

Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday called industry and think-tanks to prepare India-centric indices based on real ground level situation of the country. The minister rejected reports made by foreign organisations on issues like hunger index. "Unfortunately, we in India, depend only on foreign companies or think-tanks or organisations preparing indexes on our data or on our country, bashing us for no rhyme or reason.

Very often useless bashing we get. I mean, the hunger index, what a crazy thing, there is not probably a single guy in India who dies of starvation today particularly after the PM Gareeb Kalyan Ann Yojana," he said here at a CII summit. He added that India is getting "bashed" for lack of proper understanding and data indices being prepared fairly. Similarly, on stunting and weight, the Indian body is different from someone coming from Sweden, he said.

"We should prepare our indices based on our real ground level situation -- what is our average height in India and then decide the level of stunting, if there is any -- because the number of people found to be stunted or malnourished that this index shows is crazy. It is difficult to imagine that this is the situation," Goyal said. He said that levels of prosperity are reaching farmers, and small entrepreneurs. "We are a USD 3.3-trillion economy but against purchasing power parity, we may be USD 10 trillion.

When you factor all of that and see the real situation on the ground, I wish CII and others, get some think-tanks to do some indices which are India centric based on India's needs and requirements. I urge this on a mission mode so that we can junk those reports and we can have our own indices," he said. Talking about the production linked incentive (PLI) scheme, he said more ideas for PLI schemes are on the way. Goyal said that the government is trying to rejuvenate the textile and cotton sector and is working actively to revitalize this industry, from farmers to exports.

(PTI)