Indians most ignorant about their country, reveals 2016 study

Along with Taiwan and China, people in India are the least informed about their own country, reveals yet another study conducted by international market research group Ipsos Mori.

The study, conducted in 40 countries, revealed people in Netherland, UK and South Korea to be the best informed with India, Taiwan and China occupying the bottom three slots.

Across all 40 countries, said Managing Director of Ipsos Public Affairs Bobby Duffy, people got a lot wrong. Ironically, he added, “We are often most incorrect on factors that are widely discussed in the media”.

Ipsos Mori has been conducting the ‘Perception Reality’ surveys for the past several years and the result has been similar. The 2015 study, for example, indicated that while Indians believed as many as 33% of Indians were non-religious, the actual figure in official records was just 1%. Indians also grossly over estimated the number of immigrants by over 20 percentage points. There were similarly wide discrepancies between their perception and reality related to the percentage of female politicians, extent of obesity among Indians and the wealth concentrated in the hands of the wealthiest one per cent of the population.

The 2016 study conducted in 40 countries throws up similar levels of ignorance. Indians, for example, believed the percentage of Muslims in the population to be 28% whereas in reality it is practically half that figure (14.2%). Asked what they believed would be the percentage of Muslims in the country in the year 2020, the average response was 34% whereas in reality it is projected to increase to 15.4%.

Surprisingly, Indians seem to under estimate the number of people who are either ‘very happy’ or ‘rather happy’. While the survey threw up the figure 47, actually 80.8% of Indians claim to be happy despite all odds. Similarly the survey reveals that although 86.6% of Indians live in homes owned by them, Indians believe the number to be only 44%.

Again somewhat surprisingly the survey reveals that 33% of Indians actually find homosexuality acceptable but Indians seemed to think that it enjoyed wider acceptability at 44%.

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