From the congested slums of Mumbai to the neglected neighbourhoods of Delhi, where the poor struggle to survive each day, the widely-documented ground realities in India have long reflected the country’s weak social and human development conditions. Its ranking of 130ᵗʰ on the Human Development Index (HDI) further speaks of these realities. Against this backdrop, the government has relied heavily on headline GDP figures to project a narrative of prosperity, but growing evidence suggests that this part of the narrative, too, may have been based on overstated numbers