Monitoring Desk,23-Nov;The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, EAC-PM has issued a working paper that says that the decline in India’s rankings on a number of global opinion-based indices are due to the “serious problems” with the methodology used in these perception-based indices. The working paper ‘Why India does poorly on global perception indices: Case study of three opinion-based indices has been compiled by Sanjeev Sanyal Member of the EAC-PM and Akanksha Arora.
The Paper has analysed three perception-based indices- Freedom in the World Index, V-DEM indices, and EIU Democracy Index. The paper says that these indices are primarily based on the opinions of a tiny group of unknown experts. It also says, the questions that are used are subjective and are worded in a way that is impossible to answer objectively. There are questions that should be asked but are excluded.
The Working paper also said that certain questions used by these indices are not an appropriate measure of democracy across all countries. It noted that since these indices are inputs into the World Governance Indicators, the World Bank should ensure greater transparency and accountability from these institutions. It said that independent Indian think tanks should be encouraged to do similar perception-based indices for the world in order to break the monopoly of a handful of western institutions.
