A major error in interpreting the findings of an Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study of people’s trust in their government initially put the Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the very top but it was subsequently corrected to third position after Indonesia and Switzerland.
The OECD found that the Indonesian and Switzerland governments had the trust of 80 per cent of their people while the Indian government had the confidence of 73 per cent.
Despite the revision, the Indian people’s trust in the government compared very highly with other nations.
For the Government at a Glance 2017 study, OECD surveyed 41 countries on the parameter of “confidence in government”. It found that only 42 per cent of people globally had confidence in their government, down from 45 per cent in 2007.
The administration of Donald Trump scored a low 30 per cent on this count, while the Theresa May government in UK notched up 41 per cent. Greece was at the bottom with just 13 per cent of the people's confidence.
India in third was followed by the Canadian government of Justin Trudeau, which has the confidence of 62 per cent of its citizens, Turkey (58%), Russia (58%) and Germany (55).
Initial interpretations of the OECD results set the Internet alight with the BJP’s office countrywide sharing an erroneous graphic by Statista-Forbes, which put India at the very top. However, the original OECD publication pegged India at the third spot, with the proviso that trust in the government actually fell by 10 per cent since 2007.
In 2007, the same study by OECD had set the government’s confidence level at 82 per cent, which fell to 57 per cent in 2012 before improving to 62 per cent in 2014 and 73 per cent in 2017.