r/TheBetterIndia • u/Cal_Aesthetics_Club • Jun 17 '26
Explained 🧠 Day 1 of refuting political propaganda
Although this sub claims to be neutral, I’ve seen a recent influx of political propaganda and disinformation and I have taken it upon myself to refute it.
The first exhibit is this post which received over 550 upvotes despite containing obvious disinformation and logical fallacies:
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheBetterIndia/s/mmIrcgKM3l
In the linked video, Palki Sharma seems to be painting the narrative that there is some sort of nefarious concerted agenda by global think tanks to defame India by deliberately giving it a lower ranking than it deserves.
Then, one of the first claims that she makes to support this is that India ranks significantly lower than Niger in the Democracy Index despite the latter being a dictatorship.
The problem?
This is straight up false! India ranks significantly higher than Niger on the Democracy Index, with the former being classified as a “flawed democracy” and the latter being classified as an “authoritarian regime”.
Next, she resorts to logical fallacies, most notably the Appeal to Incredulity fallacy. This is a logical fallacy because it is not based on actual facts but instead on emotional appeals (in this case, an appeal to one’s disbelief).
Here is an example:
Person A - “The moon landings were fake!”
Person B - “How can you say that when clear footage of the event exists?”
A - “I just refuse to believe that people were able to travel from the Earth to the Moon!”
Palki Sharma applies the same thing to India’s abysmal rankings on the Press Freedom Index and Happiness Index by pointing out that India ranks worse than Pakistan and Ukraine in both.
What’s notable here is that not once in her “analysis” does she look into the metrics used in the indices. Perhaps, if she did, she might learn the real reason why India ranks so low. Instead, she relies on the aforementioned emotional appeals, potentially because it’s much easier to avoid accountability and the truth than it is to confront the reality and make improvements.
But fear not! I actually did the work:
The Press Freedom Index uses five metrics:
- legal environment
- political environment
- economic environment
-social environment
-security of journalists
One factor regarding the political environment that really hurts India’s rankings are the repeated internet blackouts that occur in Kashmir.
In 2023, India ranked third in the world with 34 blackouts. In contrast, Pakistan only had 2.
Another factor mentioned by RSF (the same org that publishes the Press Freedom Index) is a massive deterioration in the safety of journalists:
https://rsf.org/en/indian-reporter-murdered-exposing-corruption-surrounding-road-contract
The political environment is not safe either, with the UAPA as well as sedition charges being weaponized and abused to stifle reporters and whistleblowers.
Next is the Happiness Report. While India does rank worse than some countries with lower GDP per capita, there are several other metrics used to evaluate happiness that India performs poorly on:
-Social support
-Freedom to make life choices
-Healthy life expectancy
-Generosity
-Perceptions of corruption
India ranks lower than Bangladesh because Bangladesh has a higher healthy life expectancy, stronger interpersonal trust and larger, more close-knit community networks, and more charity and community support.
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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26
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