Who decides what counts as progress

The institutional arrangement has several kinds of responsibility. MoSPI’s National Statistics Office produces official statistics. Within the ministry, National Accounts Division prepares national accounts, including GDP. The National Statistical Commission has functions concerning statistical priorities, standards, quality and coordination. Technical guidance, statistical production and policy choices are connected, but they are different responsibilities. MoSPI, Roles and Responsibilities, Introduction and sections 1, 7, 26

International classifications provide a common language for measurement. Their use in an Indian survey does not make the UN or World Bank the administrator of its fieldwork. Nor does a national survey automatically require a particular welfare programme or budget. A statistical office can make unpaid activity visible; deciding what public support follows involves government choices and debate.

This is where the political economy of measurement enters our argument. The selection of a headline shapes which questions receive attention. An account centred on paid participation directs us toward employment opportunities. An account that also follows care directs us toward the conditions that make participation possible. Both can be useful. They invite different questions about who supplies essential services, who bears their costs, and whose time adjusts when support is missing.

Households also make decisions within constraints. A family may need an activity performed regardless of whether it carries a wage. If one person takes on more paid work, the responsibility may be shared, transferred, purchased, performed differently or left unmet. A national increase in employment cannot tell us which arrangement emerged. That is a question for evidence about households, services and bargaining as well as work.

The same distinction matters when valuing care. Counting its hours, estimating a replacement wage, deciding who should provide it and deciding who should pay are separate steps. A monetary estimate can inform a debate without settling entitlement, funding or the quality of the care provided. Greater visibility creates an opportunity for political choice; it does not make that choice disappear.

This interpretation of the evidence points toward a practical standard for public discussion: state the measurement boundary, identify the population carrying the responsibility, and make the proposed policy trade-off explicit. It also gives citizens a way to question a reassuring national average without assuming that the statisticians fabricated it. A number can be correctly produced while answering a narrower question than the public needs to ask.

Those choices are being debated internationally, too. India’s diaries offer one concrete way into the Beyond GDP discussion.