V-Dem Mocked For Ranking Pak, Taliban-Ruled Afghanistan Higher Than India In Academic Freedom Index

Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of the Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister (EAC-PM), has rubbished Swedish V-Dem Institute's claim that Pakistan and Afghanistan have higher levels of academic freedom than India.

In a series of tweets on Thursday (1 December), V-Dem Institute's Academic Index Freedom graph showed India below Pakistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and along with Hong Kong and China.

The index compared scores in 2005 – the global peak in academic freedom – with 2021.

Nepal has secured the highest score on the Academic Freedom Index in Asia documented in 2021, according to V-Dem.

"Meanwhile, the picture in China, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Thailand, India, and Hong Kong is discouraging," the V-Dem institute said.

"China and India alone have curtailed academic freedom for more than one-third of the world’s population," it added.

These declines are especially worrisome as the levels of academic freedom in the region were relatively low to begin with, the institute said.

Mocking the claims made by V-Dem, Sanyal said, "Am pleased to see the high levels of academic freedoms in Afghanistan and Pakistan. India must aspire to their levels as per V-Dem".

He added, "These indicators are utter nonsense - based on laughable methodology. I am amazed they have not been systematically challenged all these years".

Sanyal had recently co-authored a working paper with deputy director of EAC-PM Aakanksha Arora. The paper investigated three opinion-based indices including the V-Dem.

The paper found serious problems with the methodology used in perception-based global indices that ranked India on several parameters including democracy and freedom.

Sanyal, in the working paper, calls the methodologies used by these indices as "opaque and shallow."

The paper points towards four "serious problems" with these methodologies:

• These indices are primarily based on the opinions of a tiny group (three to six people) of unknown “experts”.

• The questions that are used are subjective and are worded in a way that is impossible to answer objectively even for a country, let alone compare across countries.

• There are questions that should be asked but are excluded. For example, it is relevant to ask for a democracy index if the head of state is elected. However, it is never asked because it would downgrade many European countries as they are constitutional monarchies.

• Certain questions used by these indices are not an appropriate measure of democracy across all countries. For example, there is an index on direct democracy which is irrelevant for large democracies.

Also Read: EAC-PM Paper Finds 'Serious Problems' With Methodologies Used In Opinion-Based Global Indices On Freedom And Democracy

Also Read: Smoke And Mirrors: How Global Indices On Democracy And Freedom Rate India