New Delhi: The Congress has questioned the GDP numbers launched by the Centre, saying that a number of different indicators—together with unemployment, a fall in overseas direct funding (FDI) and a hunch within the manufacturing sector—counsel “the BJP authorities’s official numbers are suspect”.

A report launched by the Congress’s analysis division chairperson M.V. Rajeev Gowda, a former Rajya Sabha MP, notes that the “central contradiction” within the Indian economic system lies within the focus of wealth inside a small phase of the inhabitants, alongside a parallel weakening of public programmes meant to guard folks from danger and deprivation.

“The info confirmed that the 8.2% GDP progress was pushed by a surge in manufacturing, which reportedly grew at 9.1% within the second quarter and eight.4% half-yearly (April-September 2025). Nonetheless, throughout the identical half yr, the Index of Eight Core Industries, which make up 40% of the Index of Industrial Manufacturing, grew by solely 2.9%. Such broad disparities add to the doubts surrounding the federal government’s statistics,” it provides.

The report additional alleges that the Modi authorities’s tenure has been marked by diminished confidence in India’s financial numbers, amid issues that the federal government “manipulates” official knowledge to go well with its political agenda.

“Such fears have strengthened after the Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) evaluated the standard of India’s statistics and accorded a C grade,” it factors out. The IMF awards a C grade when its evaluation signifies that the info has some shortcomings.

“Such a essential evaluation requires a evaluation of India’s GDP progress numbers to look at their veracity and to see whether or not they correspond with key drivers of financial progress,” it provides.

Gowda states within the report that the doc cuts by means of the “hype and examines the factual realities” of the Indian economic system.

The “widening inequality” in India, he provides, is the results of Modi authorities’s “deliberate coverage selections which have prioritised markets and company champions over livelihoods and social safety”.

In keeping with the report, whereas progress ought to ideally propel funding, this has not been the case in India.

“In 4 of the ten months of 2025, web overseas direct funding was unfavourable, implying that buyers withdrew extra money than they introduced in and that extra Indian capital was invested overseas,” it says.

“Between 2017-18 and 2023-24, manufacturing’s share of employment fell from 12.1% to 11.4%, whereas companies declined from 31.1% to 29.7%. Over the identical interval, agriculture absorbed extra employees, with its employment share rising from 44.1% to 46.1%, reversing the usual trajectory of structural transformation,” it provides.

(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)

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