India
fares abysmally on Personal, Social & Economic
Freedoms
India ranked No. 92 in the new
Worldwide Human Freedom Index; more economic freedom than
personal freedom in India; New Zealand ranks No
1.
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| For Immediate
Release |
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New Delhi, India —
India ranks 92nd among 123 countries ranked in the most
complete index of human freedom yet available, released
today by the Fraser Institute, Canada’s leading public
policy think-tank, and Germany’s Liberales Institut. New
Zealand leads the world in human freedom, followed by the
Netherlands then Hong Kong with the United States and
Denmark tied for seventh.
The index was
created by Ian Vásquez of the Cato Institute and Tanja
Štumberger of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. They
developed the initial draft of an objective measurement of
overall human freedom, combining for the first time economic
freedom with other forms of freedom. Such a measure will
enable researchers to answer important questions on the
impact (good and bad) of negative freedom and what supports
freedom or undermines it.
India’s position on
the index is quite worrying. Contrary to what we might
predict, India’s score on personal freedom is 5.6 and that
on economic freedom is 6.48—making the overall score 6.06
on a ten-point scale. India does particularly poorly on
measurement of freedom of expression, which creates a score
based on press killings, freedom of speech, laws &
regulations that influence media content, political
pressures & controls on media content and dress code in
public. It also does very poorly on security and safety, a
key ingredient in maintaining personal freedom and a
significant factor in economic growth.
The index is
contained in a new book, Towards a Worldwide Index of Human
Freedom, which examines the characteristics of “freedom”
and how it can best be measured and compared between
different nations. “Our intention is to measure the degree
to which people are free to enjoy classic civil
liberties—freedom of speech, religion, individual economic
choice, and association and assembly—in each country
surveyed. We also look at indicators of crime and violence,
freedom of movement, legal discrimination against
homosexuals, and women’s freedoms,” said Fred McMahon, Dr.
Michael A. Walker Research Chair in Economic Freedom (Fraser
Institute) and editor of Towards a Worldwide Index of Human
Freedom.
“The classical ideas
of freedom from the time of the Enlightenment included
economic freedom as essential to other freedoms, yet all
the indexes available up to now either measure civil and
political freedoms, often confusing what freedom actually
is, or economic freedom. This is the first index that
brings together these classic ideas of freedom in an
intellectually consistent index.”
The book is the
first publication of the Human Freedom project sponsored by
the Cato Institute (United States), as well as the Fraser
Institute and the Liberales Institut. The initial freedom
index ranks New Zealand as offering the highest level of
human freedom worldwide, followed by the Netherlands then
Hong Kong. Australia, Canada and Ireland tied for fourth
spot, with the United States and Denmark tied for seventh,
Japan and Estonia tied for ninth overall. The lowest-ranked
countries are Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and
Syria.
Towards a Worldwide
Index of Human Freedom also highlights the evolution of
economic, political, and social freedoms from the ancient
world to the present day over the course of 10 chapters by
13 academics and economists from Canada (Fraser Institute),
the United States (Cato Institute, Emory University),
Germany (Liberales Institut, Goethe-University Frankfurt am
Main), and Russia (Institute of Economic Analysis).
Fred McMahon of
Fraser Institute says, “The idea of freedom is one of the
most contested in political and philosophical discourse and
one of the most vital. Our book lays the foundation for a
rigorous analytical framework and measurement to improve
the objective measurement of human freedom worldwide.”
Chapters of note include:
“From
Pericles to Measurement”
by Fred McMahon (Fraser
Institute):
This article traces the concept of
freedom back to the classical world and examines modern
discussions of freedom from the Enlightenment through to
modern analytical scholarship. McMahon concludes that
modern indexes are incomplete and often inconsistent. He
argues for a complete measure of freedom that is consistent
with the most common sense idea of freedom—Isaiah Berlin’s
concept of “negative” freedom, meaning the absence of
restraints on individual actions.
“A Compact
Statement of a Cost-based Theory of Rights
and Freedoms” by Michael A.
Walker (Fraser
Institute)
The author draws a distinction
between two types of freedoms: those that are costless or
low cost for a society to provide and those, which require
the expenditure of resources to provide.
The first set simply requires
government to refrain from acting. Costly rights include
security of property and persons and some aspects of freedom
of speech, the latter because government needs to actively
protect those who say unpopular things.
“China,
India, and the West” by Erich Weede (former professor
University of Bonn)
The focus of this chapter is to explain
the divergent economic performance of Asia’s giants, China
and India, and the West with special reference to economic
freedom and the roots of limited government in political
fragmentation and interstate competition. The author argues
that “Ultimately, institutions matter because they
structure permissible actions and incentives. They affect
technological progress as much as they have an impact on
economic performance. Individual liberty to theorize and to
experiment as well as decentralized instead of collective
decision making have been background conditions of
progress.” The author posits, “Unless people enjoy fairly
safe property rights in the fruits of their labor, there
are insufficient incentives to work… The most fundamental
cause for the divergence between China and India on the one
hand, and the West on the other, is safer property rights
and thereby better incentives in the West than in
Asia.” |
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