Global Indices Are Rigged: Sanjeev Sanyal Calls Out The Narrative Game

For years, India has been told a familiar story: the economy grows, but jobs don’t; democracy is flawed; press freedom is sliding; governance is suspect. These claims arrive neatly packaged in global indices with impressive names and foreign addresses. According to economist Sanjeev Sanyal, this isn’t coincidence — it’s narrative engineering.

Sanyal, in a podcast with ANI, argued that global opinion is shaped through a carefully layered system. Think tanks publish “research”, universities cite it, media reports amplify it, Wikipedia locks it in, and rating agencies use it as gospel. Over time, opinion hardens into “fact”. Challenging it becomes difficult because even arguing against it means accepting the framework.

At the centre of this system sit popular global indices — from Freedom House and V-Dem to press freedom rankings and governance scores. According to the full-time member of the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council (EAC-PM), many of these rely on opaque methodologies, unnamed experts and subjective opinions. The same small circle of institutions, often funded by Western foundations, ends up validating each other.

The real problem? These rankings aren’t just for debate shows. Investors, multilateral lenders and rating agencies use them to decide where capital flows. If the indices say a country’s democracy or governance is weak, money becomes more expensive — or disappears altogether.

India has been pushing back against this. One major win came in 2024, when the World Bank withdrew its World Governance Indicators after questions were raised about how they were constructed and who actually stood behind them. For Sanyal, it proved that these systems are not untouchable — but taking them on requires serious intellectual firepower.

The EAC-PM member's argument goes further: India cannot just complain. It needs to build its own global-quality frameworks. That means credible indices, transparent methodologies and independent institutions that can stand scrutiny. One such effort is an alternative sovereign ratings model developed through an Indian-owned agency. Early results suggest it has predicted recent credit events better than established Western rating firms.

On the economy, Sanyal was equally blunt. The idea of “jobless growth”, he said, simply doesn’t hold up to data. GDP growth remains strong, with real growth near 7%. Employment surveys, EPFO enrolments and consumption trends all point to jobs being created — even if they don’t look like the old, factory-floor roles many expect.

Sanyal also defended the economic churn. Bankruptcies, firm failures and disruption are not signs of distress but of a system that allows creative destruction. Successful companies, he argues, should not be punished for growing — unless they abuse monopoly power.

Globally, Sanyal places India in the second tier of powers, alongside Europe and Japan, just below the US and China. India’s strategy, he says, should be “multi-alignment”: competing with China in some areas, collaborating in others, and never locking itself into rigid blocs.

At its core, this is about mindset. Sanyal called for breaking the inherited belief that India has always been a passive actor in history. The fight, he says, is not just about policy or growth numbers — it is about who gets to define reality. And India, finally, is learning to argue back.