‎New Delhi, Agency

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Monday accused the Narendra Modi government of manipulating official data to create an impression of robust rural wage growth, alleging that changes in the methodology used for wage calculations had artificially inflated the figures while masking continued stagnation in real incomes.

‎In a statement, Ramesh claimed that the government was repeating a pattern that the Congress had earlier alleged in the case of employment statistics.

‎“In 2024, we had flagged that the Modi Government – through the RBI – had changed the definition of employment to show a boom in job creation, claiming the addition of 168 million jobs since FY18. The leadership of the RBI was later rewarded for its efforts with plum postings in the Modi Government,” he said.

‎The Congress leader argued that the government was now attempting a similar exercise with rural wage data at a time when weak consumption demand and sluggish private investment continued to weigh on economic growth.

‎“We have consistently flagged that the root cause of India’s economic slowdown is the stagnation in real wages, which has weakened consumption growth and deterred private investment. Unable to fix this original sin, the Modi Government is now ‘doctoring’ a rural wages boom,” Ramesh alleged.

‎According to him, official data showed annual rural wage growth rising sharply from around six per cent to between 17 and 18 per cent during the period from June 2025 to March 2026, while average daily wages reportedly increased by 12.7 per cent in a single month.

‎Ramesh contended that the apparent surge was the result of an undisclosed methodological revision by the Labour Bureau rather than a genuine improvement in earnings.

‎“This ‘boom’ in wages has been manufactured by a methodological change. The Labour Bureau – without a press release or website disclosure – adopted a new sampling framework, which brought in workers from many northeastern states, NCT Delhi, and Goa into the sample pool,” he said.

‎He further claimed that the newly added regions, despite representing only a small fraction of the national workforce, had a disproportionately large influence on the survey results.

‎“Despite accounting for only around 1.2 per cent of India’s workforce, these new data collection points account for around 11 per cent of the total sample. Most importantly, their average wages run around 50-55 per cent above the old sample because newly added regions have far less agricultural employment and more higher-skilled workforces,” Ramesh said.

‎The Congress leader maintained that a closer examination of the data suggested that actual wage growth remained weak.

‎“In reality, an analysis of wages data shows that the genuine wage growth would have been around 4.3 per cent per annum – which is the weakest growth in four years,” he claimed.

‎Ramesh accused the government of manipulating statistics to project a more favourable picture of the economy, saying, “This is the entire political science of data doctoring at play.”

‎The remarks come amid an ongoing political debate over employment, wage growth and consumption trends in the Indian economy, with the opposition repeatedly questioning the government’s economic data and the Centre maintaining that its policies have strengthened growth, job creation and incomes across sectors.

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