Public perception about India’s future further boosts in October
The October 2025 wave of the Ipsos Global Advisor, What Worries the World global survey shows, that public perception about India’s future has further boosted in October 2025, with 66% citizens believing that India is headed in the right direction, showing a surge of +3% in optimism over the previous month. This positive wave is seen among citizens of most APAC markets, with Singapore (81%) and Malaysia (66%) placed ahead of India, and Indonesia (63%), South Korea (61%) and Thailand (56%) emerging the other upbeat markets. Australia displayed near polarized views (48%).
In case of most global markets their citizens were seen to hold a pessimistic view about their countries’ future with the overriding impression of their markets being on wrong track. France (8%) and Peru (9%) emerged most gloomy with a miniscule number of citizens optimistic about the future prospects of their nation.
Ipsos’ What Worries the World survey tracks public opinion on the most important social and political issues across 30 countries month on month, drawing on over
ten years of data to place the latest scores in context.
Commenting on the findings of the survey, Suresh Ramalingam. Ipsos India CEO said, “India’s stand of revitalizing the local economy through Make in India and Made in India, leveraging the demographic dividend by encouraging domestic consumption through the purchase of home-grown products; strengthening the hands of our traders and artisans is steering the local economy, despite global economic slowdown and the impact of wars further adversely impacting most countries economically. Course correction by the govt on September 22nd announcing a bonanza of GST rate cuts also led to a joyous Diwali for most citizens, with the lowering of prices of non-essentials and big-ticket items.”
Worry around key issues stabilizes
Indians’ top worries have stabilized in October 2025. Inflation remained at the same level as the previous month, worry for unemployment lowered by -1 percentage points, for education it remained the same as previous month, financial and political corruption remained the same as last month, while worry for crime and violence dipped by -3%.
Global worries too were stable – with inflation and unemployment scores being the same as last month; poverty and social inequality and financial and political corruption – both lowered in worry levels by
-1%; concern for crime and violence saw a minor uptick of 1% - with peace talks for Ukraine war and Gaza war making positive headway, and US President Donald Trump leading the initiative and bringing like-minded nations to collectively negotiate peace deals among affected nations, worry levels are stabilizing.
COP30 & Brazil
With COP30 underway from Oct 10th-21st, 2025, the survey also focused on worry around climate change. The host country of COP30, Brazil had at least12% citizens highlighting climate change as a worry. India, despite a brutal monsoon season of landslides, flooding and devastation, had only 10% beset with worry for climate change. Japan (30%) and South Korea (22%) had deeper concern.
“For Indians the hierarchy of worries begins with the cost of living, jobs, education, graft, poverty etc. Climate Change comes much later, despite its collateral impact, leaving a trail of damage and disruption of daily routines,” added Ramalingam.
Methodology
This 29-country Global Advisor survey was conducted between September 19th 2025 to October 3rd, 2025, among 25,589 adults in 30 countries including India. The interviews were done via the Ipsos Online Panel system among 500 adults aged 18-74 in Canada, Israel, Malaysia, South Africa, Türkiye and the United States, 20-74 in Indonesia and Thailand, 21-74 in Singapore, and 16-74 in all other nations. The sample in India consists of approximately 2,200 individuals, of whom approximately 1,800 were interviewed face-to-face and 400 were interviewed online.
