Gathering reliable economic data in India is quite challenging and it has become even more difficult in the more than four months as the nation has been without a chief statistician. TCA Anant retired from the Central Statistics Office on Jan. 31 and the government has been looking for a replacement ever since. Bureaucratic processes have delayed the appointment, and while a few candidates have been interviewed for the job, a final decision is yet to be made by the PMO. At stake is the reputation of an institution that's been working hard to rectify the image that India has deficient and unreliable economic data. With a population of 1.3 billion and an economy of $2.3 trillion collecting timely and accurate information is a gargantuan effort. It's an action-packed year on the statistics calendar, with the government working to revise base years for key economic data and publish a new labour survey. And with only months to go before the next election, the data is also coming under increased scrutiny as Modi's political rivals question his claims about key campaign pledges, such as jobs. The government also plans to start a Time Use survey -- a breakdown of how people spend their time. It will, among other things, help assess contribution of women in non-marketed economic and social activities, including at home. Another key role is needing to defend the CSO's work when it makes changes to data methodology. Like in 2015, when the statistics office published a new series for a gross domestic product that put India's growth rate on par with China. Economists said at the time that the data didn't match up with high-frequency indicators showing more subdued expansion. The CSO was without a boss when it released figures last month showing the economy regained its position once again of being the fastest-expanding major economy in the world, with the growth of 7.7 per cent in the fourth-quarter of the fiscal year ended March 31.