The Indian government offered the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) official data for its “Democracy Index” rankings, but the EIU declined.
The Principal Economist (Asia) of EIU informed Indian government officials that the scoring for the index was done on the basis of monitoring developments through information available in the public domain, according to documents prepared by an inter-ministerial group for Niti Aayog’s plan to create a dashboard for monitoring global indices.
This, according to the documents, includes political opposition to certain new laws, including the Land Reform bill, the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, and the state-backed internet blackout in Jammu & Kashmir, which may have resulted in a downgrade.
The response came after government officials contacted the EIU for clarification on the Democracy Index, which ranked India 53rd and labelled it a “flawed democracy.” Indian officials wanted to know about the sample size, as well as other aspects of the methodology, the agencies/authors/contributors, and any consultations with government agencies.
Union government asked the High Commission of India in London to learn about “the assessment mechanism of the Democracy Index (DI)” as well as “methodology, sample size, details of authors and agencies that were used to curate this index” from the EIU based in London.
The government made several attempts to contact EIU’s Principal Economist Asia & Client Engagement Officer, Fung Siu, according to other documents, and finally interacted with her in September 2020 via Zoom.
“EIU relies on the annual reports of US based think-tanks like Freedom House and Pew Research, Human Rights Watch and Reporters Sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders). For example, the action of JSF to recently downgrade India from completely free to partially free in terms of press freedom will definitely resonate in EIU country forecasts,” they noted her as saying.
When asked if there were any consultations with government or official agencies during the preparation of the index, the EIU officer stated that they do not consult governmental agencies because their work is independent of any external interference, according to the documents. Concerned parties are notified and a copy of their report is sent to them.
“On the qualitative side, Ms Siu emphasised that India was a very strong country, and that even if some quantitative elements appeared to be negative, she would have the final say on the forecast, and that, barring extreme scenarios such as India going to war and suffering a terrible monsoon, the net report for India would still be positive.”
