Academic freedom index: German-Swedish report places India below Pakistan, Sri Lanka

A recent study “Free Universities Report: Putting the Academic Freedom Index Into Action”, jointly prepared by two institutes in Germany in Sweden has placed India below Pakistan in its Academic Freedom Index (AFi), stating India is among the “one-third of countries with the worst performances in 2019” with a “D” status, with an AFi score, between 0.4 and 0.2 on a scale of 1.
Stating that India is one of the country which have de jure guarantees in place, while extensive violations of academic freedom occur in practice.” The report has been prepared by Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) and Sweden’s V-Dem Institute.
On a scale of 1, while Pakistan scores 0.554 and Sri Lanka 0.506, while India scores 0.352. As a matter of comparison, United Kingdom scores 0.934, Brazil 0.466, Singapore 0.411 and Russia 0.364 (a little better than India), while Bangladesh and China a poor 0.195 and 0.101 respectively (in E status, below 0.2). The report says, there was “insufficient data” to rate US and Australia along with several African countries, Burma and Afghanistan.

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