Serial commentator Sadanand Dhume, tweeted a thread yesterday, yet again reminding us that democracy is in danger in India. This time, he chose an interesting strategy, that I think warrants a deeper discussion on the contrived thinking of this self-proclaimed liberal gang.
First, Dhume begins by quoting Professor Ashutosh Varshney, who in turn quotes a report of an obscure institute from Sweden called V-Dem. The loop is fascinating – these folks quoting just amongst themselves and telling us that this is the absolute truth! I am reminded of how The Print invented a lie that the Central Vista will cost 20,000 crores; how The Wire, The Hindu, The Week et.al picked it up; how The Print quoted their own lies in future reports; and how Sonia Gandhi ended up using that lie in one of her letters to the Prime Minister of India.
The graph that Dhume and Varshney are fascinated with, is plotting two indices. One is “Electoral Democracy” and the other is “Liberal Democracy”. Here is that graph:
You can easily two dips in the graph. One during the 1975 to 1977 phase. And the other dip starts right from the year 2014 (What a beautiful coincidence). India was under Emergency from 1975 to 1977. That meant, no elections. That also meant, no dissent and therefore no space for “liberal democracy”. Zero elections and zero dissent allowed during the emergency. Yet, for this period, this wonderful graph says that both “electoral democracy” and “liberal democracy” score a non-zero, positive number on the index!
So, it’s natural to ask what exactly was the methodology used to arrive at this brilliant conclusion that there existed “liberal democracy” during the Emergency. This is exactly what the former CEO of Prasar Bharati, Shashi Shekhar, asked Dhume to explain. Dhume calmly tells us that the onus is not on him to explain. In his own words, “But the onus is on those who think the indices are wrong to argue convincingly…”. This is yet another game plan that the whole allegedly liberal gang employs. The “onus of proof” is on the reader and not on the writer. And if the reader actually ends up proving the lies of the writer, then the reader is wrong (duh!). This entire gang thrives on two things – 1. lie regularly, and 2. badmouth those who call out their baseless lies regularly!
When Shashi Shekhar persists and asks – “what is the underlying model and what data was used to compute the indices ?”, Dhume very innocently asks – “Which index specifically do you mean, and what information would you like to see that is not available?”
At this stage, I stood up from my seat and gave a standing ovation to Dhume. His entire thread is based on just two indices – “Electoral Democracy” and “Liberal Democracy”. And when asked what is the underlying model for these indices, he so very innocently asks “Which index”? I would really like to gain such guts in life and brazen it out like this! Dhume doesn’t stop there. He goes on to tell us that “V-Dem, on which Varshney’s charts are based, does go into quite a lot of detail on their website.” The easy thing for Dhume to do would have been to just give us the specific link to the website, but why do such hard work when you can brazen out your lack of intelligence?
Now that we have proved the farce that the graph is, we can move on to discuss the other brilliant arguments in Dhume’s thread. He classifies the Indian population into two categories – One is “Scholars” and the other is the “average Indian”. Dhume certifies that India’s “electoral democracy” does well despite us having a “low per capita income” and this is what the lowly average Indian cares about. The “scholars” of course think that India is doomed. Or maybe Dhume classifies them as “scholars” because they think India is doomed?
Dhume tells us that there is a “decline of institutions like the Supreme Court”. Elsewhere in the thread, he also tells us that “Judges are cowed”. What proof does he offer for this? Nothing. He just says this is “well documented”. This means that it is the headache of the “average Indian” to go find out this documentation and then just agree with the documentation!
Dhume shares a page in which the author gives us just two examples from the Congress regimes of the past where freedom of expression was challenged. The chapter then mentions that nothing was as worse as how things were between 1998 to 2004, and from 2014 onwards. Again, no proof is offered. Why do you need proof when the “scholars” have told you so?
Dhume attempts to end his 8-tweet thread on a sad note that Indians don’t seem to care about what the world thinks about our democracy. Dhume doesn’t realise that he is making the fallacious assumption that some articles in some newspapers amount to what the “world thinks”. You cannot blame him for thinking so – because this is how the entire gang thinks. The gang believes they are the torchbearers of this sinking world and the hapless citizens simply don’t want to recognize the awesomeness they bring to this world!
You know what is the best part of this entire thread? Dhume adds two more tweets and tells us that “personally I find V-Dem Institute’s methodology confusing.” Why would you form opinions based on confusing methodology and express your opinions/conclusions based on such confusing methodology? There can be only one reason for this – to further an agenda that shows India in poor light and gain attention. This is the only way the alleged liberal gang knows how to thrive!
