Since 2007, India has annually observed June 29 as Statistics Day to commemorate the birth anniversary of Professor Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, a pioneer in statistics and economic planning. This year, the Union Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) released the Sustainable Development Goal 2026 report on this occasion.The report documents the progress India has made on several crucial indicators, including per-hectare productivity and Gross Value Added per worker (GVAPW) in agriculture and allied sectors – a measure of the economic output generated by each agricultural worker – at constant prices. This information is useful to monitor the target of doubling agriculture productivity, as part of the goal of ending hunger, achieving food security and improved nutrition by 2030.The government’s latest SDG report suggests that agricultural productivity has more than tripled in the decade from 2015 to 2025. If true, it would be one of the biggest productivity gains in India’s history. However, we believe the claim is based on flawed calculations.Sustainable Development Goals:SDG 2026 indicates that during the 2015-25 decade, per-hectare productivity of wheat and rice grew by 18.4% and 19.2%, respectively. But agriculture’s GVAPW increased by 224% over this period. Thus, India’s agricultural GVAPW seems to have achieved an impressive 12.5% annual growth in real terms.From the figures published in SDG 2026 (see table), it is also seen that agriculture GVAPW doubled in 2022-23 over 2021-22 and it more than tripled during 2015-25. To us, this looks a statistical anomaly.Table: Real GVA in Agriculture and Allied ActivitiesYearGVAPW Published (Rs)Total (Rs crore)GVAPW Recomputed (Rs)(1)(2)(3)(4)2015-1661,42716,16,146–2016-1765,60317,26,004–2017-1869,93618,40,02397,3062018-1971,40218,78,59899,3432019-2075,80119,94,32690,2512020-2178,83720,74,21289,3662021-2282,48221,70,10696,5422022-231,80,77547,56,194–2023-241,85,54348,81,626–2024-251,93,29350,85,532–2025-261,99,09852,38,265–Source: Column 2 from SDG-2026 Target 2.3.2; Column 3 from National Accounts Statistics 2025 (Statement 1.6, till 2021-22) and Press Note on Provisional Estimates of Annual Gross Domestic Product for 2025-26, 05 June 2026 (2022-23 onwards); Column 4 computed by the authors.Note: Persons classified as “workers” under the usual principal and subsidiary status (UPSS) in the annual Periodic Labour Force Surveys (PLFS), adjusted for the relevant projected populations, constitute the total workforce used for computing GVAPW in Column 4.Writing on The Wire in October 2025, we had pointed out the lacunae in the figures published in the SDG Progress Report of 2025. We assessed that the real GVAPW in agriculture and allied activities had, in fact, declined by 4.5% between 2017 to 2024 against the 28.7% increase shown by the SDG-2025 report.New anomalyWe find that another anomaly has crept into the agriculture GVAPW published in SDG-2026. We feel that figures in Column 2 cannot be compared across years because the data up to 2021-22 use 2011-12 as the inflation-adjusted base year, while data from 2022-23 onwards use 2022-23 as the base year.Though the metadata (the explanatory notes) at the end of the SDG 2026 report state that the values are at constant prices, the fact that the data belongs to two separate series with different base years is not clarified anywhere in the report.While the formula to compute GVAPW, provided on page 138 of the SDG 2026 report is quite straightforward, it cannot be overemphasised that to calculate the output per worker, both the relevant years and the total number of agricultural workers must belong to the same period in order for their ratio to be meaningful.The forumla is that the numerator is the GVA in the agriculture and allied sector and the demoninator is the number of workers, it follows that both must refer to the same year. Else, the result is meaningless.On the same page of SDG 2026, the source of the data is stated to be the National Accounts Statistics (NAS), though the NAS only provides data on total GVA, not the GVAPW for any sector.From the figures published in SDG 2026, it is observed that agriculture GVAPW has been obtained by dividing the yearly total GVA of the agriculture and allied activities (Column 3) by the number of agriculture workers – which is placed at 26.31 crore for all the years from 2015-16 to 2025-26. It is inconceivable that the total number of agriculture workers in the economy has remained static during the whole of the last decade.It is for these reasons that we believe that the GVAPW for agriculture has not been calculated correctly.In fact, the SDG 2026 does not mention the source of data on number of agriculture workers used in the denominator. Therefore, year-wise GVAPW has been recomputed (Column 4) using the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) data (see explanation to table).From this, it is seen that, actually, agriculture GVAPW is much higher in the beginning than what is mentioned in the report. However, while SDG 2026 shows significant growth in the GVAPW over the years, we do not find much of a change.It is clarified that because there was no PLFS prior to 2017-18, agriculture GVAPW for those years cannot be computed. Also, the GVAPW in Column 4, recomputed by us, pertains to 2011-12 prices, and we have refrained from computing the same for year 2022-23 onwards as it would lead to similar interpretational confusion of figures belonging to two different price bases.The preceding discussion on the GVAPW issue may well be seen as minor in itself, but it may be viewed by Indian and global experts as symptomatic of a deeper malaise pervading the statistical system.If India is indeed sincere about reclaiming past glory, MoSPI must address such basic conceptual and computational errors in its future documents so that India’s prestige in having a sound statistical system is not seen as compromised.Sanjay Kumar retired as Additional Director General of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. N.K. Sharma retired as Director General of the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation. Siraj Hussain is former Union Agriculture Secretary. Views are personal.