The Sabyasachi Das Paper
What is it that the (former) Ashoka University assistant professor, Sabyasachi Das , did that stirred up such a storm? He did a rigorous analysis of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in his paper, “Democratic Backsliding in the World's Largest Democracy ” . But what exactly did the paper say/find? Yogendra Yadav wrote this excellent piece describing what that paper said (and equally important, what it did not say). First, this wasn’t an economist writing about politics. Rather, this was a statistical analysis of certain patterns Das found. As with many things in statistics, it cannot prove something; but it sure can raise valid suspicions . Das himself admits as much in the paper: “The tests are, however, not proofs of fraud, nor does it suggest that manipulation was widespread.” Second, since this is a purely statistical analysis, it does not get into topics like EVM tampering – one needs to prove that happened, just throwing accusations is pointless. Instead, ...