PM’s Opinion Poll reminds people of ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ 

People have long been familiar with loaded questions such as “Have you stopped beating your wife? With the stipulation that the answer must be either ‘yes’ or ‘no’.” Either reply is of course going to damn you because the question pre-supposes that you have been beating your wife. Such questions are known as logical fallacy.

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday sought the opinion of people on note ban or demonetisation , he used a similar method. Do you think there is black money in the country, asked one of his questions inviting or suggesting the obvious answer. Not surprisingly, an overwhelming number of respondents gave the expected reply. The result of the poll therefore was a foregone conclusion said this report in The Quint.

Narendra Modi tweeted the result on Wednesday afternoon. He claimed that half a million people had responded to his appeal, over 90% of whom supported his decision to ban ₹500 and ₹1,000 currency notes. Snide comments soon came flooding in. “It is still 10% short than such polls in erstwhile USSR” read a wry tweet while a more indignant one asked why only half a million people responded to the poll since the Bharatiya Janata Party claims to have 88 million members.

Others pointed out that the Namo App has been downloaded by a million people so far. And 7% of the response had come in from outside the country. With only 17% Indians using smartphones and the Internet penetration being just about 35%, the opinion poll was hardly representative, said others. An incredulous Member of Parliament Mohua Moitra of the Trinamool Congress said on TV that the PM’s poll was laughable because half a million people in urban India could not be taken to be the voice of 125 million Indians.*

A similar objection was raised a day earlier by MIM MP for Hyderabad Asaduddin Owaisi when he tweeted that in a country with 400 million illiterate people, what possible purpose could an opinion poll among the few smartphone users serve.

Later in the evening, thewire.com revealed that contrary to popular belief the Namo App is owned and administered by Narendra Modi himself and not by the Government of India. The office address of the domain user is given as BJP’s office on Ashoka Road in New Delhi. The report said, “Let’s bear in mind that the app is owned and operated by Narendra Modi. However, nowhere is there a disclosure that the move has been initiated by Modi as a private individual and not in the capacity as the Prime Minister. But… here’s the thing, media outlets used the term Prime Minister which directly (or indirectly) implies that this is a initiative by the GoI. That’s not the case.”

Another news website scroll.in took a dig by uploading a video from the uproarious British TV serial ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ in which two bureaucrats discuss how opinion polls can be manipulated to secure the desired or pre-determined result.

*The population of India is 1,336,286,256 billion on November 24, 2016, or 1,336 million people. This article has been updated at 11.25 am, 24/11/16 to reflect this fact