New Delhi, June 21 -- The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (PMEAC) has issued a point-by-point rebuttal to former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian's research paper that concluded India's growth was overstated by as much as 2.5 percentage points between 2011-12 and 2016-17. The report punches holes in the methodology adopted and arguments put forth by Subramanian, rejecting his conclusions. His research "would not stand the scrutiny of academic or policy research standards", according to the council, which likens it to "spurious criticism". Take, for instance, Subramanian's reason for not using tax revenue to gauge economic activity even though it offers actual data rather than estimates. He didn't use them, he argued, because India's tax rules underwent major changes. But that defence is odd, indeed, because the only noteworthy change seen by taxation over the past decade was a switch to the goods and services tax, which took place only after the period under scrutiny....