India, March 9 -- The first estimates of independent India's national income were prepared by a stellar team led by the national accounting pioneer Moni Mukherjee. Their work was supervised by a committee led by the renowned statistician PC Mahalanobis, and had two world-class economists as its other members: VKRV Rao and DR Gadgil. The committee was advised by the likes of Simon Kuznets and Richard Stone, who later won the Nobel Prize in economics.

Despite the involvement of these storied names, the national income estimates faced criticism. The people involved in the exercise themselves expressed scepticism about some of the national accounts data.

Revisions in the national accounts series (NAS) in subsequent decades were also followe...