Paid surveys vitiate Indian polls

A sting operation this week by a little known TV channel in India, News Express, raised doubts about the credibility of the opinion polls currently dominating the Indian media. The sting covered 11 research and polling agencies, 10 of them minor players but including CVoter, the agency which has been conducting surveys for two major media houses, The Times of India and the India Today groups. India Today group was quick to suspend its agreement with the agency after the sting operation was telecast. But given the tepid response to the sting in the mainstream media, partly because it exposes them as well and partly because News Express itself does not enjoy very high visibility or credibility, it will be safe to hazard the guess that in this election season, the sting will be merely a blip.

The sting operation did not unearth anything that was not suspected earlier. But it reconfirmed doubts which observers have held since long. Yashwant Deshmukh, the major domo of CVoter, is heard on spy camera saying that his agency had prior agreements and hence would not be able to undertake the desired survey. But a sister concern, Abacus, could be used to disseminate the results. The team conducting the sting is heard protesting. Nobody had heard of Abacus and no channel would take it seriously, they tell Deshmukh. Mr Deshmukh appears amused and goes on to reassure the team that he had excellent relations with TV channels, anchors and editors and would have no problem in getting the results aired. He names the editors, who he claimed worked closely with him.

Others confess on camera how they created companies overnight to purvey different outcomes for different political parties based on the same set of data. One of them agrees to manipulate the data in favour of the ‘party” for a price. And virtually all of them boast of their proximity to TV channels and how it would be child’s play to get them to air their findings and arrange a live ‘debate’.

It is not exactly a secret that most of India’s 800 plus TV channels are bleeding. Not surprisingly, they seem to welcome ‘Opinion Polls” and “Surveys” given to them on a platter. Conducting a scientific survey in a country of India’s size costs money with some experts putting the figure at approximately ten million Indian Rupees, an amount which few media houses can afford to pay unless they are sponsored or are made available to them virtually free.

The frequency of such surveys since 2012, therefore, have looked suspect. CVoter and Nielsen appear to have conducted most of these surveys, beginning as early as January, 2012. And in surveys seemingly conducted every quarter, they by and large came up with the same findings, that the right-wing opposition party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was way ahead of the Congress and that the BJP-led National Demcoratic Alliance (NDA) would easily triumph over the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA), if the general election were to be held at that point of time.

In the absence of any regulator or any law requiring transparency, it was never clear whether the agencies were relying upon the same sample each time. Nor has it been clear whether the agencies have been exchanging data or selling the data to each other, thus maximising their profit and optimising their cost. There is no clarity either on how the respondents are selected or on what kind of questions are put to them and in which order. Above all, if media houses are not paying for the surveys, which appears to be the case because of the frequency with which surveys are being aired and because of the costs involved, the question over the funding of such massive exercises assumes importance but remains unanswered.

The schizophrenic nature of the media coverage given to these surveys is obvious. While even the most effusive of these surveys stopped short of predicting that the BJP or the NDA would secure a majority of seats, the obvious inference would have been of a hopelessly hung house. But virtually all the media houses opted to paint a larger than life picture of BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and a rosier than real picture of the BJP’s electoral prospects. Such window dressing can only be a command performance.

The credibility of the opinion polls has hit such a low that even a blatantly partisan and pro-BJP website like Firstpost.com, promoted by the Network 18 Group in which India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani is a stakeholder, was obliged to question the findings of a survey done by Washington based think tank, PEW Research Centre. This despite the fact that the survey endorses all preceding polls that found the BJP surging ahead and coasting to victory.

A prescient report in the monthly magazine Caravan last year had pointed out the helplessness of the pollsters. Serious and respected pollsters like Dorab Sopariwala and Yogendra Yadav were quoted as saying that psephology could accurately predict the vote shares in an impending election but converting them into seats was a trickier proposition. But the media, they lamented, were only interested in seats and nothing beyond it.

That is why the Indian general election this year will not just test the popularity of Indian leaders and political parties. It will also be a litmus test for opinion polls and pollsters.

— Uttam Sengupta is a deputy editor of Outlook in New Delhi.