Opposition faces severe trust deficit

New Delhi: The trust level of Indians in Prime Minister Narendra Modi has zoomed in the last two years with more than three fourths or 76.3 percent, expressing “a lot of trust”, according to the IANS-CVoter tracker conducted across the country. The results of the survey was released today.

PM Modi’s ratings have galloped as compared to 2018 when 58.6 percent of respondents in the tracker had expressed “a lot of trust” in his leadership. The spectacular ratings come at a time when India is battling Coronavirus and PM Modi’s handling of the situation has drawn praise within the country and globally also.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has praised the Modi Government’s decision to put in place a Coronavirus lockdown across India.

“World Health Organisation commends India’s timely and tough actions to stop COVID-19. It may be early to talk about results in numbers, but a six-week nationwide lockdown to facilitate effective physical distancing, coupled with expansion of core public health measures such as detection, isolation and tracing contact of COVID-19 positive people, would go a long way in arresting the virus spread,” WHO had said.

The net trust factor in the tracker, which is a measure of trust shows that 69.8 percent of respondents have shown a lot of trust in PM Modi’s leadership as against a much smaller number of 42.3 percent in 2018, a massive positive change of 27.5 percent. Those who showed no trust at all have come down to only 6.5 percent compared to a higher 16.3 percent in 2018.

Lack of trust in the Opposition

The survey finds that there is a lack of trust in the Opposition among the people. The Opposition, which moved in a calculated manner during COVID-19 but confined itself to suggestions and criticisms, could not garner the trust of the citizens, the survey found.

As per the survey, only 19.4 percent of people have “a lot of trust” in the Opposition and 31.7 percent have “some trust” in it, while a whopping 38.2 percent have “no trust at all” in it. The balance 10.7 percent did not have any opinion on the issue.

Interestingly, 24 percent of Muslims did not show any trust in Opposition followed by 16.4 percent of Sikhs and 4 percent of Christians. The majority community has also least confidence in the Opposition with upper caste Hindus going for the Government with 50.4 percent do not trust the Opposition at all followed by OBCs with 40 percent. The Scheduled Castes (35.9 percent) and Scheduled Tribes (38.3 percent) have also lost confidence in the Opposition.