One of the favourite pastimes of Indian liberals is mocking India and the Indian government. They take advantage of every chance to criticise the central administration headed by Narendra Modi, even if it involves making false claims. The Henley Passport Index for 2024 was just made public. France was ranked number one, while India fell to 85th place from the previous year.
The anti-Modi crowd has circulated a screengrab of a Mint report titled “World’s most powerful passports 2024: India slips one notch to 85th, ranked below the Maldives, Saudi Arabia, and France’s tops list” on social media in an attempt to claim that India has somehow become “weaker” than a tiny nation like the Maldives.
These people are so enraged at Modi that they are not aware that the Maldives is one of its main trading partners and that the majority of its imports come from India. India became the island nation’s second-largest trading partner in 2022 when its exports to the Maldives amounted to Rs 49 crore of the total commerce between the two countries. Apart from offering necessities like food, water, and infrastructure, as well as higher education, India has been a significant contributor to the island nation’s medical tourism industry. The most popular destination for Maldivian medical tourists is India.
It’s interesting to note that although India’s economy is still expanding, the Maldives is at “high risk” of experiencing both external and general financial crises.
Liberals criticising the Modi government over India’s placing in the Henley Index 2024 raise concerns about whether or not these individuals even comprehend the process and significance of the ranking.
It is noteworthy that India scored 85th on the survey, while France topped it with a passport that allows entry without a visa to 194 countries.
While left-liberals are gloating about it as more of a “defeat” of the Modi administration and an embarrassment to India, in reality, there is nothing to that effect (at least not for them).
The Henley Passport Index’s methodology
The London-based worldwide citizenship and residency consulting company Henley & Partners publishes the Henley Passport Index, which it advertises as the “original ranking of all the world’s passports.” The International Air Transport Association (IATA), which manages airline cooperation globally, provides statistics that are compiled into the index. As soon as a country changes its visa regulations, the Henley Passport Index is updated instantly. It covers 199 passports and 227 destinations.
The index is calculated using information obtained from the IATA on a designated day each year. In order to generate a visa list—a list of locations that a passport bearer can travel without a visa, with a visa on arrival, an e-visa, or a traditional visa—this data is enhanced by leveraging publicly available sources to account for real-time changes in visa requirements.
If passport holders from a country or territory do not need a visa for any particular travel location, a score of 1 is assigned to that passport. If passport holders are able to receive an electronic travel authority (ETA), a visitor’s permission, or a visa upon arrival at their destination, a score of one is also assigned. These types of visas don’t need government clearance before departure because of special visa-waiver programmes. A score of zero is given in cases where obtaining a government-approved electronic visa (e-Visa) prior to departure is mandatory for passport holders or if a visa is required. If passport holders require prior government clearance for a visa upon arrival, a score of 0 is also allocated; this situation is not deemed “visa-free.” According to Henley Global’s website, “the total score for each passport is equal to the number of destinations for which no visa is required (value = 1), under the conditions defined above.”
Notably, since many nations with strong diplomatic relationships with other nations grant broad visa-free travel to other nations, international relations and the weight a government places on tourism play a considerable role in defining the “power” of a nation’s passport. But in this case, reciprocity is really important.
In this sense, India has very rigorous policies. According to India Visa Online, the country only accepts travellers from these three nations: South Korea, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). India has a lower ranking in the Henley Passport Index due to its extreme reserve on reciprocity. It appears that the Indian government prioritises the interests of the nation over increasing reciprocation, only to appear higher on a passport.
The Indian passport came in at number 87 in 2022, and it was visa-free for roughly 60 countries. India will rank 80th in 2023, with 57 countries allowing visa-free travel. India now ranks 85th on the 2024 Q2 index, despite having 62 visa-free travel destinations in 2024, down from its ranking of 80th in the 2024 Q1 index.
Notably, the left-liberal milieu and opposition parties frequently use these global indices to criticise the Modi administration. India, an economically stable and one of the world’s fastest-developing economies, placed 137th in the World Happiness Index 2023, whereas politically unstable, flood-affected Pakistan, which was on the edge of economic collapse, ranked higher at 118th.
This casts doubt on the reliability and usefulness of the index in question. “You should actually tell everybody to come to Bengaluru—you can see which is the world’s happiest place, particularly on a Friday night,” External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said, rejecting India’s ranking in the index and citing a friend from Singapore who once claimed that Indians appeared happier than Europeans.
Similarly, in 2022, the Indian government disparaged the Global Hunger Report, claiming that “the annually released Global Hunger Index seems to be characterised by misinformation.” In a statement, the central government exposed the bias and incorrect methodology employed by the agency, emphasising the survey’s use of irrelevant questions without seeking out true answers to determine the Hunger Index. The government also disapproved of the Global Hunger Report 2023, in which India ranked 111 out of 125 nations, citing “serious methodological issues and a malafide intent” as the index’s flaws.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman criticised the report during her speech in the Rajya Sabha on February 8th, stating, “Let’s be conscious of hunger; the Global Hunger Index is not a balanced approach to measure it.”