A massive 70% of Indians feel a sense of injustice prevailing in the country at present, close to 60% lack confidence in public institutions and one in three think the system is failing them, a new global poll, with focus on India, has revealed just when the national elections are around the corner.

Worse, about 72% Indians are worried about not having right skills to secure well-paying jobs and an equal percentage of them fear the country is losing its “unique tradition and culture” and over 80% want change, the Edelman’s Trust Barometer, an online survey representing 84% of total global population having access to the internet, has revealed.

The survey measured trust in “the system”, defined as governments, media, businesses and non-governmental organisations. It polled respondents from 27 countries and divided them into “informed public” or those with higher education, income and media consumption and the rest as “mass population”.

In India, the survey found “informed public” to be pessimistic when it came to the sense of injustice in the present regime than the masses. More number of informed people were also worried about the system having failed them. They were the ones who largely lacked confidence in the system, still, a sizeable number of them were hopeful that things could be changed for the better.

According to the poll, in India, the “mass population” had low trust in the government compared to the informed and educated public. The general public and informed ones trust businesses more than the government and the masses have very little faith in media. The poll showed them giving more credence to NGOs. It showed a modest rise of around 5% in the trust level of informed public in the government in India in 2019 compared to 2018, but the trust in NGOs grew by 9%.

Informed public trusted media more than the general population. Seventy-six precent informed Indians trusted media, an increase of 6% percentage points over last year. But only 58% of the masses trusted media, with search engines emerging as most trusted form of gathering news.