Who: American Sociology prof teaching at Univ of Sydney

Context: The Indian left relies on validation from below-par white humanities academics for their anti-Modi viewpoints (Audrey Truschke, Chris Jaffrelot etc). Now the Indian right has finally found a below-par white humanities academic to support their viewpoints, i.e. that the left is prejudiced against India and silent on human rights abuses by China, Pakistan and Islamic autocracies. Previously, the Indian right only relied on people with no academic cred and people who are brown, e.g. J Sai Deepak.

Why it matters: Now the Indian right has a counter when the left waves Audrey Truschke at them to support their viewpoints, or when moderators on Wikipedia etc censor the right claiming that their viewpoints have no academic validation.

Thanks for the tldr.

Can anyone who watched summarise his argument, beyond the tweet? That India's government should not be criticised by the 'intellectuals', or that the will of the people should rule supreme in the 21st century, or that capitalism should not be bridled by notions such as human rights, welfare or reservations? Just speculating about some options here, trying to genuinely understand...

His argument is that these rating agencies determine the democracy, freedom of press, etc. "rating" of a country of 1.4 billion people [where free and fair elections are held every year (for some electoral body or the other), where courts select their own judges, where there are about 4500 news outlets/publications/broadcasters publishing all kinds of opinion against or for the govt] by asking a few select "intellectuals" to fill out their responses/opinions to a pre-determined questionnaire and tally those up (along with a few other parameters). This results in a ridiculous situation where India's press freedom is less than China's HongKong where an entire publication gets shut down and the editor is missing (presumed dead), Or a situation where Taliban ruled Afghanistan has higher academic freedom ranking. As a result the only conclusion he or you or I can make is that those "intellectuals" who provide a rating are biased against India. Not a really difficult conclusion to come to, is it? or if you have another logical, coherent conclusion, please do elaborate. He didnt say it, but I will: if you even know rudimentary statistics or have a rudimentary understanding how to measure anything, let alone "rating" of a 1.4 billion people country, you would know that these ratings are statistical chicanery at best, fraud in the worst. I think he gives these rating agencies a pass on their methodology, frankly unfairly. These agencies and the "intellectuals" they ask for opinions arent worth the salt they consume. He didnt say that last few sentences. But he should have.

That seems to be Babones' only legitimate point and his self-admitted only area of expertise: such rankings are by their very nature flawed (and Sekhri claims he mostly agrees with him on that point, in the interview).

I mean, look at it this way: if India Today, Outlook and NIRF can't even come up with an Indian law school ranking that everyone can agree with, how do you expect a bunch of people sitting in Zurich or Oslo or wherever from condensing every single country's freedom of speech level into a single metric?

There will obviously be disagreements in methodology and the like. I do feel where those rankings do have a little bit of value though, is that rather than comparing countries to each other, is to give an indication of one country's rise and fall in rankings over the years against itself. And the important question to ask: do you think has India's freedom of speech fallen in the last years or stayed roughly the same, because it's not like Congress-led governments were not abusing Criminal Defamation, IT Acts and other draconian censorship when they were in power?

Perhaps what has arguably fundamentally changed in India is the corporate ownership and kow-towing of media, plus the well-funded organised disinformation campaigns. Views?

Once again, like I said in the other thread, thanks for a civil conversation. As I said there, I have very limited time. So this is going to be a longwinded reply in the hope that we dont have to back and forth. That said, I figured I would respond to you, since you seemed genuinely vested in the arguments. so here goes:

you said: "That seems to be Babones' only legitimate point " Actually just about every point Mr Babones made except where he absolves the rating agencies' methodology of choice, was valid. If you find something he said that wasnt valid please do point out. But going beyond that, THIS is the ONLY point Babones or I needed to make to address Mr Sekhri's concern about Mr Babones's statement "India's intellectuals are anti-India ....." which Mr Sekhri said kicked off a storm. The horrendously bad methodology of collecting input from select handful of "intellectuals" on various parameters related to the country heavily weights their opinion over other objective criteria. Like I said above, Therefore the only viable conclusion you can reach based on the lower rankings for India compared to Hong Kong, Afghanistan, several african countries, middle eastern countries etc is: that india's intellectuals are anti-India (since the survey is not about the government, but about the country). QED. It looks like you agreed with the same assertion I made above. So Mr Babones doesnt have to make any other valid point to address Mr Sekhri's objective of the interview

you said: "how do you expect a bunch of people sitting in Zurich or Oslo or wherever from condensing every single country's freedom of speech level into a single metric?" Fully agreed. But this is why V-Dem pretends that they do justice by asking "intellectuals" in each country, which is laughable. But Babones unfortunately gives them a pass on this "methodology". But it is deeply flawed like you said. But the flaw is not the only problem. As I establish above, the "intellectuals" are sufficiently anti-India that their evaluation of parameters of democracy results in ridiculous situation that we established above and in the previous paragraph. So Babones or you or I can reach no other conclusion other than the one that these people are anti-India (not anti-government, or maybe they are taking out their frustration against the government in supposedly objective evaluation of the country").

You said: "how do you expect a bunch of people sitting in Zurich or Oslo or wherever from condensing every single country's freedom of speech level into a single metric?" Sorry all I can say is that when you evaluate large populations (or even small populations) you have to rely on sound statistical techniques. Anecdotes and select events (even if you have 100s of examples) are simply unrepresentative of even a million people country let alone a 1.4 Billion people country. Note that most exit polling which are actually carefully modeled and sampled, fail in India and quite a bit even in the US too where they have honed exit polling for a long time. What chance do anecdotes and select news coverage have? So if you truly want a trend, you need to look at proven statistical metrics and see if the change in those metrics is significant beyond usual fluctuations.

Here is my suggestion to you: Take all the key metrics that you care about in a democracy, find the original source of data for each (likely a statistical agency of govt of India), assemble those into a spreadsheet and chart those up for at least 5 decades. Then see how they have changed in the last 8 years or X years. With limited exception, if you find that most of these metrics have gotten significantly worse in the last 8 years, lets have a discussion on those. I have seen a few of these plotted. I would wager most metrics have gotten better not worse. This is precisely why the international rankings asking a handful of "intellectuals" is such a fraud. Please feel free to challenge me if you find that the trend is significantly worse in the last 8 years (as I said with limited exception). Please ignore outliers such as lock-downs, migrant labor yatra etc which are once a century pandemic induced.

there is a vast array of media presence in India, including party sponsored or party influenced media in most states, for major parties, that there are enough media whicn arent kow-towing to the govt of the day. .

The Indian left very much relies on brown professors with a lot of academic credentials who continue criticising modi. Amartya Sen is pretty much at the forefront of academic welfare economics and he's been a vocal critic of several narendra modi policies. The major difference between the left and the right is that the left doesn't need to latch onto academics. Academia is left-leaning because the right comes off as dogmatic and anti-intellectual.

I could name a slew of other extremely respected academics that have been critical of the modi regime that makes this dude seem like a nobody, which, considering the grifter like books he writes, he probably is.

Also, calling an entire group that disagrees with exclusionary policies anti national is not an academic take, it is nationalist propaganda, BJP often calls its enemies anti India.

Modi =/= India, Modi is a proto-fascist proponent of nationalism that stands against the principles this country was founded on, so in the genuine sense, Modi is the anti national force working to undermine India's secular and tolerant history and legacy.

Thanks for sharing the video, very interesting. He doesn't seem that batty after all and makes some valid points, and Rajdeep has moderated very well.

His statement that "India's intellectual class is anti-India" is a bit trollish, probably also on part of India Today, and mostly made to attract attention.

Some of his arguments that UP is less violent than Rwanda, Bihar is more democratic than the Democratic Republic of Congo fall a bit flat though, no?