Today statistics made sense to me. Joy. Now realise the passion of Ravi Krishnan for numbers. Talk to him, he will like ilk in Mint spout zeros and decimals; inking dissenters is a matter of arithmetic for him. Angus Deaton is their God. My God too, for today. The British economist is all over The Indian Express and Mint, making for some interesting reading. How Angus Deaton views India by Manas Chakravarthy is a pickup of Deaton quotes with a possible statistical bias. The first quote: On India's growth: Rapid growth but slower-than-warranted-poverty decline. On Indian politics: BJP is a religious and business-oriented party, Congress is business-oriented party with a pro-poor rhetoric that sometimes delivered pro-poor policies. Mint, the Shankaracharya of free markets, pleads: Deaton's Nobel should be an occasion to bring back the social in economic sciences. That perhaps is a Marxian vitamin. Not sure as in college reading Marx scored zero in Statistics. Dianne Coffey and Dean Spears in The Indian Express write: The central message of Angus Deaton's work: Becoming richer is not necessarily the same thing as becoming better off. They also add: India has slowly transformed from a world leader in the availability of survey data to a place where meaningful statistics simply are not available. These days, nobody really knows the height of India's children, or how much babies weigh when they are born, or what fraction of people in rural India defecate in the open. The dimming of the historical light of Indian statistics matters for the world: One-fifth of all humans are born here. P.C. Mahalanobis may assent nod. Swachch Bharat, where are you. Possibly a leaky Swachch Bharat and MNREGA are better than none. In me little way, me finds less queues in Mumbai; me has stood midnight in milk and kerosene lines; today, there are no BEST lines; prefer autos; milk is flowing; it is another matter if all are not buying; but as the milk business is doing fine, the numbers should have gone up; typists and stenographers from south do not stream into Mumbai; they go to US and West Asia; poor bhaiyas in autos are the fresh replacements; they also may quit with the Rule of 8. Perhaps, the most relevant economist in the last 50 years. Deaton will always be relevant if India does or does not fudge numbers. Will Arun Jaitley and Dr. Raghuram Rajan have some time for Deaton and his ask for numbers?