Aakar Patel | India's image in free fall, but govt in denial on real causes

In 2020, the Narendra Modi government decided to improve India’s standing on various indices that showed a deterioration in governance. A report the next month said the government was “working to improve India’s ranking on 29 global indices, and it wants the message to reach everyone loud and clear”. The way it would do this was “a massive publicity campaign” that would “shape India’s perception” through advertising and “micro-sites of ministries” and it would also “publicise the problems, parameters and data sources of global indices”. India since 2014 has done poorly on six indices that tracked civil liberties and pluralism, five that tracked health and literacy, two tracking religious freedom and minorities, two tracking Internet denial, six tracking national power of various types, four tracking the rule of law and corruption, four tracking sustainability and environment, four tracking gender issues and their safety, four tracking economic freedoms of Indians and four tracking urban spaces. It may appear strange that the Modi government should have thought reversing this performance required “a massive publicity campaign” which would “shape India’s perception” through advertising and more websites, but it is how the government thought.