New Delhi, June 1 -- India's growth numbers shape how citizens understand everything from jobs to investment to global standing. But what if those numbers don't tell the full story? New research suggests India may have both underestimated and overestimated growth at different moments over the past two decades. To discuss these issues and other challenges to India's growth story, economist Abhishek Anand was the featured guest on a recent episode of Grand Tamasha, a weekly podcast on Indian politics and policy coproduced by HT and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Anand is Founder and Managing Director of Insignia Policy Research and a Visiting Fellow at the Madras Institute of Development Studies. He previously worked at the World Bank and in the Indian Economic Service with roles across the Ministry of Finance. Anand spoke with host Milan Vaishnav about controversy over India's GDP estimates, reforms in the statistics ministry, and the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) policies to defend the rupee. They also discussed his work on power-sector reform and the rise of non-tariff barriers that undercut the spirit of new bilateral trade agreements. Along with ex-Chief Economic Adviser Arvind Subramanian and ex-IMF official Josh Felman, Anand coauthored a working paper-India's 20 Years of GDP Misestimation: New Evidence-published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "From 2005 to 2011, [we] argue that India's GDP growth was underestimated by around 1.5 percentage points. The official growth number is around 6.5%, but it should have been somewhere close to 8%," Anand told host Vaishnav. "For the subsequent period, from 2011-12 to 2023, GDP growth seems to have been overestimated by 1.5 to 2 percentage points. The official growth number is around 6%, but according to us, it should have been around 4 to 4.5% on average." Anand was also critical of the RBI's exchange-rate stance. "When the RBI keeps the rupee artificially high, it is keeping imports more attractive than they should be. Letting the currency depreciate is a much better subsidy policy than doing all these production-linked incentives and trying to help domestic manufacturing-because you don't have to pick winners," he said. He argued depreciation would boost exports, especially in labour-intensive sectors: "We keep talking about the China-plus-one opportunity, but that window is narrow. The best way to exploit it is to give confidence to domestic manufacturers that they can compete in the global market." Anand also called for overhauling India's subsidy policy, highlighting the fiscal burden of power subsidies. He noted that when states promise free electricity, typically 100-200 units, it means around 45 to 50% of the overall subsidy goes to agriculture and households combined....