Today Bollywood actor Javed Jaaferi posted a tweet today making a shocking comment that India has become the most dangerous place to live in. Jeffery had said that this has found in a survey, and he had quoted a report by an obscure Pakistani website to make the claim. But a cursory glance at the report and the sources that it relied on to make the claim shows that it is completely incorrect, and no survey has found that India has become the most dangerous country.
India becomes the most dangerous country to live in: Survey https://t.co/BdsHlRaINV
— Jaaved Jaaferi (@jaavedjaaferi) January 23, 2020
The report by the Pakistani website News Box was based on a tweet by The Spectator Index, a handle that regularly posts various statistical figures related to various topics. Interestingly, the tweet didn’t put India in the first place in the list of most dangerous places to live in 2019, rather it was in fifth place. Brazil was listed at the first place in the tweet by Spectator Index.
Most dangerous places to live, 2019.
1. Brazil
2. South Africa
3. Nigeria
4. Argentina
5. India
6. Peru
7. Kenya
8. Ukraine
9. Turkey
10. Colombia
11. Mexico
12. UK
13. Egypt
14. Philippines
15. Italy
16. US
17. Indonesia
18. Greece
19. Kuwait
20. Thailand(InterNations)
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) January 18, 2020
But the Pakistani website used clever way make India the most dangerous place, as they mentioned in the body of the report that India is ranked top among the Asian countries, but overall it is ranked fifth. But their headline said “India becomes the most dangerous country to live in: Survey”, a completely misleading claim.
The Spectator Index had mentioned in their tweet that the ranking is done by InterNations. After their tweet was posted on Twitter, InterNations replied to them to clarify that the tweet is completely wrong, and they have not created a list of “most dangerous places”. They informed that they have a Safety and Security subcategory in their survey, where the respondents rated countries based on three factors, peacefulness, personal safety & political stability.
Hi,
We’d like to clarify that we have not created a list of “most dangerous places”. Rather, we have a Safety & Security subcategory in our survey, where respondents rated 3 factors including peacefulness, personal safety & political stability. Report: https://t.co/TDGp2vo8Kn— InterNations (@InterNationsorg) January 20, 2020
The InterNations report is titled Expat Insider 2019, and based on a survey among expats about their perception of foreign nations. The ranking is not based on real crime and other law and order statistics which determine how dangerous a place is, but it is based on the opinion of foreigners about India. More than 20,000 respondents had participated in their survey, and based on that InterNations had ranked 64 nations in various categories, including safety and politics, where India was ranked at 60th place.
The online survey had ranked the countries in five indices, Quality of Life, Ease of Settling In, Working Abroad, Family Life, and Personal Finance. In the overall list of top expat destinations among 64 countries, India was ranked at 59th place in the survey. In 2018 India’s rank was 66 among 68 countries, so actually India has made some improvement in the ranking. It is important to mention that Pakistan was not ranked in the survey, as the country didn’t qualify to be included in a survey on expat destinations.
Therefore, the claim that India is ranked as the most dangerous place to live is completely false as no such survey was done. Similarly, the Spectator Index tweet claiming India was ranked as 5th most dangerous country is also false for the same reason. India was ranked 5th worst in the Safety and Security subcategory in an expat destinations survey, and it is not a survey on how dangerous a place is for living.
