Sweden's V-DEM Report: India is no longer a Democracy

The V-DEM(Varieties of Democracy) produces an annual report on the state of democracy around the world based on a dataset of almost 30 million data points for 202 nations around the globe. It is an independent research organization founded by Swedish political scientist Staffan Lindberg in 2014.

The report says, "The third wave of autocratization” accelerates – 25 countries, home to 34% of the world’s population (2.6 billion people), are in democratic decline by 2020. At the same time, the number of democratizing countries drop by almost half down to 16 that is home to a mere 4% of the global population". The fifth annual report of the V-DEM Institute on Democracy, entitled "Autocratization Goes Viral", has downgraded the world's largest democracy to an "electoral democracy" report found that India is on the verge of losing its status as a democracy. This year, V-DEM retroactively classified India as an "electoral autocracy" based on data from the previous year. In last year's report, India was in the top 90 countries (in the top 50%). But with the recent drop in position, India has advanced from the top 50% of 180 countries to the bottom 50% as analyzed by the V-DEM institute. India took 97th place in the ranking.

Key points in the report concerning India :

• According to the report, "Narendra Modi led the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory in India’s 2014 elections and most of the decline occurred following BJP’s victory and their promotion of a Hindu-nationalist agenda."

• India's liberal democracy was recorded at 0.34 in late 2020 after falling sharply from its high of 0.57 in 2013, a 23% drop on the LDI scale of 0 to 1, making it one of the most dramatic changes among all power countries. in the world for the past 10 years along with autocratic countries like Brazil, Hungary, and Turkey. The latter two became (electoral) autocracies in 2018 and 2014, respectively, and India is now joining them.

• The report in addition mentions that "censorship efforts are becoming routine and no longer even restricted to sensitive (to the government) issues. India is, in this aspect, now as autocratic as is Pakistan, and worse than both its neighbors Bangladesh and Nepal".

• In addition, it also says that civil society is being increasingly muzzled while organizations aligned with the Hindutva movement have gained freedom.

• "Modi and his party have also placed constraints on civil society and have gone against the constitution’s commitment to secularism. Recently, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) from 1967 and amended in August 2019 is being used to harass, intimidate, and imprison political opponents, as well as people mobilizing to protest government policies. The UAPA has been used also to silence dissent in academia. Universities and authorities have also punished students and activists in universities engaging in protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)", says the report.

• Frequent use of defamation is used to silence journalists.

The report also notes that liberal democracies have declined from 41 countries to 32 countries over the past decade. Electoral autocracies are still the most popular form of the regime and, along with nearby autocracies, house around 68% of the population. 

It also shows that the number of democratizing countries has almost halved to 16, which is only 4% of the world's population.