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.
