Partly_True: The Indian government announced it won't release the findings of the Consumer Expenditure Survey 2017-18 in November 2019 because of data quality issues, amid reports that consumer spending in rural areas has dropped for the first time in more than four decades.

MOSPI announced of not releasing the report but whether consumer spending dropped for the first time in over forty years is unverifiable.The press release published by the Press Information Bureau on 15th November 2019 says that the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MOSPI) decided not to release the Consumer Expenditure Survey results of 2017-2018. The ministry says that it referred to a committee of experts which noted the discrepancies in the collected data and recommended a refinement in the survey methodology to improve the data quality aspects on a concurrent basis. The news articles published by The Economic Times on 16 November 2019 says that consumer spending in India declined for the first time in more than forty years, with spending in rural areas falling by 8.8 per cent. The ‘Business Today’ news article states that according to the National Statistical Office (NSO), due to weak rural demand, consumer spending had dropped for the first time since 1973. However, as of 10 January 2020, there are no credible sources available to objectively verify whether consumer spending in rural India has declined in over four decades.