NEW DELHI, May 26 (Reuters) – India plans to push again in opposition to “agenda-driven”, “neo-colonial” nation rankings produced by international companies on matters like governance and press freedom, a key adviser to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi informed Reuters in an interview on Friday.

Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of Modi’s Economic Advisory Council, mentioned India has begun to lift this difficulty at international boards. He mentioned the indices had been being compiled by a “tiny group of think-tanks in the North Atlantic,” sponsored by three or 4 funding companies which are “driving a real-world agenda.”

“It is not just narrative building in some diffused way. This has clear direct impact on trade, investment and other activities,” Sanyal mentioned.

India ranked decrease than Afghanistan and Pakistan within the new World Press Freedom Index launched by Reporters Without Borders. It was under Pakistan and Bhutan in an educational freedom index by V-Dem Institute.

Over the previous yr, India has in numerous conferences identified the issues in strategies used to compile international indices utilized by establishments just like the World Bank, World Economic Forum (WEF) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Sanyal mentioned.

The “World Bank is involved in this discussion because it takes these opinions from these think-tanks and effectively sanctifies it by putting it into something called the world governance index,” Sanyal mentioned.

The World Bank, WEF, Reporters Without Borders and V-DEM Institute didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark. UNDP mentioned it could reply shortly.

Sanyal mentioned the rankings additionally get hard-wired into decision-making by means of environmental, social and governance (ESG) norms and sovereign rankings. Multilateral improvement banks supply subsidised loans to ESG-compliant tasks.

“The idea of having some ESG norms is not the problem in itself. The problem relates to how these norms are defined and who certifies or measures compliance to these norms,” he mentioned. “As things are currently evolving, developing countries have been completely left out of the conversation.”

The matter is being taken up by the Cabinet Secretariat, which has held greater than a dozen conferences on the difficulty this yr, a authorities official mentioned. The Cabinet Secretariat and finance ministry didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

India has said it plans to be an advocate for creating nations underneath its G20 presidency. Sanyal didn’t say if India has flagged the difficulty of nation rankings with the G20.

“There are other developing countries who are also concerned about this because effectively this is a form of neo-colonialism,” he mentioned, including that involved ministries have been requested to ascertain benchmarks and have interaction repeatedly with rankings companies.

Some of the upcoming indices being watched out by India are monetary improvement index by International Monetary Fund, gender inequality and human improvement indices by UNDP, logistics efficiency and worldwide governance indicators by the World Bank, sources mentioned.

Reporting by Sarita Chaganti Singh; Editing by Conor Humphries

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