No, the Modi government is not the ‘most trusted’ in the world
Forbes made a mistake and NDTV, TOI and India Today followed suit.
As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its latest ‘Government at a Glance 2017’ report last week, many media houses reported that India topped the global index of countries, amongst those that had the most confidence in their government.
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ContributeThese stories that had appeared in a section of mainstream media organisations, including The Times of India, NDTV, India Today and Forbes, were not only inaccurate but falsely glorified the current Narendra Modi government.
In Chapter 13 – page number 215 of the report, ‘Confidence in National Government in 2016 and its change since 2007,’ data refers to the percentage of citizens who answered, ‘Yes,’ to the question – “Do you have confidence in the national government?”
OECD has outsourced the data collection for certain parts of the report to a private agency – Gallup Polls, which based its results on a survey of 500–1,000 citizens in each country.
Media reports mention that in India, 73 per cent Indians have confidence in the current government which is the highest in the world. India, in fact, stands two slots below Switzerland (CHE) and Indonesia (IDN), which record close to 80 per cent confidence, an analysis of the OECD table indicated.
Furthermore, confidence levels in the Indian government which stood at 73 per cent in 2016 were nine points down – 82 per cent recorded in 2007. Another fact that was not reported.
So, how did so many media organisations get it wrong?
It appears that instead of analysing the original OECD report, media organisations depended on the Forbes story. NDTV, in fact, cited this report in its piece as the source. The Forbes report has erroneously stated that “With 73 per cent, India was at the very top of the governmental confidence league…”
Forbes has since updated the piece and modified that sentence to, “With 73 per cent, India was towards the very top of the governmental confidence league (Indonesia and Switzerland were highest overall)…” However, it has not acknowledged that the earlier report had inaccurately placed India on the top of the list by way of an update. The accompanying chart that shows India on the top is still there.
Meanwhile, India Today’s Rahul Kanwal hosted a segment glorifying PM Modi’s government, without so much as doing a basic fact-check or looking up the original source.
To give credit where due, Financial Express, reported on the OECD findings correctly, saying that India is at the third position on “Trust in government” chart, following Indonesia, which is at second position with around 79 per cent people’s confidence. While Switzerland has been placed at the top with a whopping 80 per cent people having trust in their government.
OECD is an intergovernmental economic organisation comprising 35 countries, and India is not even a member of OECD. Apart from a few sections in the 282-page report, India has largely not contributed to data for statistical analysis in the report.As far as other data heads are concerned, confidence of citizens in Indian systems seems poor. Only a little over 60 per cent of Indians were satisfied with the country’s healthcare system, while in countries like Switzerland and Belgium, levels of satisfaction reach up to 90 per cent. The citizen satisfaction with education and schools in India has dropped from 80 per cent in 2007 to 75 per cent in 2016. According to the World Justice Project statistics in the report, India scored 0.5 on index value for fundamental rights protection, fourth last after Turkey, China and Russia, while countries like Denmark scored over 0.9.
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