Since yesterday morning, a certain story is trending and almost all major media houses have published it. It’s the report that India is on the top of global index of countries with most confidence in their government, with 73% Indians favoring their government. It was first picked up from an article by Forbes and subsequently Indian media houses jumped on the bandwagon.

The source of this data is OECD’s Government at Glance 2017 Report. This 282 page long report through data sheds light on public practices and protocols to provide feedback for public sector reforms. It provides indicators that compare the political and institutional frameworks of 35 OECD countries and other partner countries (Brazil, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Lithuania, Russia, and South Africa). ‘Trust in government’ is just one aspect in this report, which reports primarily on public finances, budgetary procedures, open governance, public employment, human resource, risk management and communication.

All the media houses have misinterpreted the report, exaggerating some points and completely ignoring the important insights. Like always nobody even mentioned anything about the methodology that is involved in the data collection and analysis. So I decided to look it up myself from OECD website. I have provided the link to the OECD report below. I have also added the screenshot for your quick reference. While the figure of 73% is accurate, there are huge issues with the way it has been reported and how it is being used as a propaganda tool now.

Let me break down the whole survey and the report for you to understand completely.

India is not on the top of the index, its Switzerland and Indonesia both at 80%. A graphic that OECD shared on its official Twitter handle shows Switzerland and Indonesia are listed at the top for 2016, followed by India. The link to the tweet is provided below.

2. Another vital information, which all the media houses skipped, was that the data that was presented was actually a comparison between the values in 2017 and 2007. The focus is on the changes in trust levels over time rather than the absolute trust levels.

OECD’s report data shows that trust levels in India in 2007 were 82%, thus registering a decline of 9% over this period. According to the previous reports released in 2015, 2013, 2011, trust levels in India were 73%, 55%, 70% respectively. The change in trust levels is influenced by many dynamic variables and to better understand & identify these factors, OECD has presented the study through a 2007 Vs 2017 assessment.

Graph from the Trust in Government section. India is highlighted in yellow. Notice the decrease in trust level as represented by the diamond symbol. Here it shows India registered a decline of 9% in trust levels since 2007.

This is explained in the report itself, under the ‘Trust in Government’ section page 214, it says, “Levels of trust in the national government vary strongly between countries and over time. Social, economic and cultural factors have a large influence on differences in levels of trust in government across countries. Consequently, changes in trust levels over time are the focus here rather than absolute trust levels. Most recent data is compared to values for 2007, the year before the onset of the financial and economic crisis.”

3. Now let’s see the methodology involved in this survey. The measure for trust is obtained from the public opinion polls. Here, the data is derived from the ‘Gallup World Poll’. GWP is the only survey that collects data on levels of trust in government on an annual basis for OECD countries and other major economies. Here it is important to that note, the whole OECD report contains multiple studies and surveys, only a few of them use The Gallup World Poll data. Others use reports from OECD, UN, World Bank, IMF, World Justice Project, International Peace Foundation etc.

The data collection is based on the technique of proportional stratified probability sampling or in simple terms random sampling. The sample size for most surveys and most countries is kept around 1000. In words of George Gallup himself this is like knowing how good a soup is by tasting just a tablespoon of the soup. This sampling technique is considered to have a margin of error of around 3–5% when the other conditions of the poll like the question asked, evaluation methods, diversity in sample size etc. are neutral.

The survey used a single question to ascertain whether or not the citizens have confidence in their government. Thus the data mentioned in the report refer to the percentage who answered “yes” to the question, ‘‘Do you have confidence in national government?’’.