Data Deception

The Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) has long basked in a halo of scholarly prestige. Its Lokniti surveys, dutifully published in ‘serious’ English dailies are treated by India’s commentariat as if they were gospel truth. SuhasPalshikar, its senior theorist, has spent years cultivating the air of a detached academic sage. Sanjay Kumar, its psephologist-in-chief, is endlessly quoted on television panels as a neutral custodian of data. But beneath the varnish of ‘objectivity,’ one finds an institution addicted not to rigour but to narrative-building often with the help of foreign funds and partisan sympathisers at home.

The latest fiasco was a gift-wrapped case study in how not to do research. On August 17, Kumar alleged, in a series of posts on X, that Maharashtra’s electoral rolls had mysteriously swollen or shrunk at implausible rates between the Lok Sabha elections and the state Assembly polls. His implication was that the Election Commission was complicit in shenanigans that robbed the Opposition of victory. Predictably, Congress leaders such as Pawan Khera pounced on the numbers, weaving them into a broader tale of ‘vote theft.’

Within 48 hours the story collapsed. Fact-checkers quickly demonstrated that the alleged official rolls ‘mystery’ were the result of sloppy spreadsheet handling and not any suspicious activity on part of the ECI. Confronted with ridicule, Kumar deleted his posts, confessed to errors by his data team and apologised.

Any first-year research assistant knows that electoral rolls are revised on different schedules, and that comparing Lok Sabha and Assembly registers requires careful alignment of constituency data. To cite figures without basic verification is malpractice. That it was done by a man held up as India’s foremost pollster should alarm anyone who still mistakes CSDS for a serious academic outfit.

For years CSDS has been accused of being less a research centre than a narrative factory, financed generously by Western donors such as the Ford Foundation, Canada’s IDRC, Britain’s DFID, Norway’s NORAD, and the Hewlett Foundation. The global record of these patrons shows a taste for funding projects that emphasise social divisions and undermine majority cultures, often under the benign-sounding rubric of ‘pluralism’ or strengthening democracy. In India, the suspicion has lingered that CSDS has tilted its surveys, framing Hindu society as a fractured polity in need of external tutelage.

Palshikar and his colleagues will scoff at such charges, citing academic freedom and methodological rigour. Yet the Maharashtra episode has revealed a culture of carelessness, where politically convenient claims are rushed into public view without the most basic due diligence. The larger scandal is how India’s ‘prestige press’ has colluded in laundering CSDS’s reputation. Readers have been encouraged to see these as windows into the ‘real’ India while the reality is otherwise.

In politics, numbers are weapons. To deploy them carelessly is a dereliction of responsibility. CSDS and its luminaries have mistaken condescension for competence. India deserves better than this cartel of snooty academics peddling foreign-funded illusions as fact.