By Our Correspondent
NEW DELHI – India, downgraded to the status of an “electoral autocracy” in 2018, has declined even further on multiple metrics to emerge as one of the worst autocratisers under the anti-pluralist Bharatiya Janata Party government, says ‘Democracy Report 2024’ released recently by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute, functioning in the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, which tracks democratic freedoms worldwide through a rigorous exercise.
The disturbing findings of the report have come just before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, when the BJP is seeking the third consecutive term at the Centre after indulging in activities during the last 10 years considered detrimental to the country’s pluralist and democratic traditions. The BJP government at the Centre has presided over the decline in all spheres of public life and promoted hatred and violence among different sections of society at an unimaginable scale.
The V-Dem Institute’s 8th annual “Democracy Report 2024: Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot” shows that autocratisation continues to be the dominant trend, and the more fine-grained
regime changes include the countries which are experiencing democratic declines despite having recently improved (called Bell-turns) and inversely countries which are improving despite having recently been in a period of decline (called U-turns).
The V-Dem report categorises countries into four regime types based on their score in the Liberal Democratic Index (LDI): Liberal Democracy, Electoral Democracy, Electoral Autocracy, and Closed Autocracy. Their annual report, which maps each country on a matrix of whether they are turning more democratic or more autocratic, stated that in 2023, 42 countries, home to 35% of the world’s population, were undergoing autocratisation.
“India, with 18% of the world’s population, accounts for about half of the population living in autocratising countries,” the report said. Democratisation was taking place only in 18 countries, accounting for just 40 crore people, or 5% of the world’s population. As much as 71% of the world’s population, or 5.7 billion people, live in autocracies, an increase from 48% ten years ago. The level of democracy enjoyed by the average person in the world is down to 1985-levels, the report said, with the sharpest decline occurring in Eastern Europe, and South and Central Asia.
Noting that almost all components of democracy were getting worse in more countries than they were getting better, the report singled out freedom of expression, clean elections, and freedom of association for civil society as the three worst affected components of democracy in autocratising countries. The autonomy of the electoral management bodies is weakening substantially in 22 of the 42 autocratising countries, the report said.
South and Central Asia regressed significantly, with the level of liberal democracy enjoyed by the average Indian now down to levels last seen in 1975, when the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency in India. According to the V-Dem classification, a liberal democracy is one where, in addition to the requirements of electoral democracy such as regular free and fair elections, mechanisms for judicial independence and constraints on executive overreach are robust, alongside rigorous protection of civil liberties and equality before law.
In an electoral autocracy, which is the category India falls into, multi-party elections coexist with insufficient levels of basic requisites such as freedom of expression and free and fair elections.
Noting that India’s autocratisation process has been well documented, including gradual but substantial deterioration of freedom of expression, compromising independence of the media, crackdowns on social media, harassments of journalists critical of the government, as well as attacks on civil society, the report detailed how the anti-pluralist BJP government has used laws on sedition, defamation, and counterterrorism to silence critics.
“The Narendra Modi-led government also continues to suppress the freedom of religion rights. Intimidation of political opponents and people protesting government policies, as well as silencing of dissent in academia are now prevalent,” the report noted, adding that the only liberal democracy in the whole of South and Central Asia was Bhutan.
In a separate section on the 60 countries which will go to the polls in 2024, the report observed that more than half of these were in periods of democratic decline. Noting that elections in autocratising countries are critical events that can either trigger democratisation, enable autocratisation, or aid stabilisation of autocratic regimes, the report stated that a majority of elections in 2024 would be in highly contested spaces, making 2024 a critical year for the future of democracy in the world.
With regard to India, the report said that a third consecutive term for the BJP and Modi could lead to further autocratisation given the already substantial democratic decline under Modi’s leadership and the enduring crackdown on minority rights and civil society.
“The ruling anti-pluralist, Hindu nationalist BJP with Modi at the helm has for example used laws on sedition, defamation, and counterterrorism to silence critics. The BJP government undermined the
Constitution’s commitment to secularism by amending the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in 2019,” the report stated. India dropped down to electoral autocracy in 2018 and remains in this category by the end of 2023.
V-Dem’s Democracy Report is a collaborative project involving 4,200 scholars from 180 countries, and is based on 31 million datasets that cover 202 countries from 1789 to 2023. V-Dem is stated to be a unique approach to measuring democracy – historical, multidimensional, nuanced, and disaggregated – employing state-of-the-art methodology.
Since 2009 – almost 15 years in a row – the share of the world’s population living in autocratising
countries has overshadowed the share living in democratiaing countries. The decline is stark in Eastern Europe and South and Central Asia. V-Dem conceptualises and measures democracy, distinguishing between multiple core principles of democracy: electoral, liberal, majoritarian, consensual, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian. The main V-Dem dataset includes over 60 indices and 500 indicators.
In sharp contrast to all other regions of the world, the democracy enjoyed by the average person in Latin America and the Caribbean increased in the past year. This is primarily a result of recent improvements
in Brazil, the most populated country in the region with 21.6 crore citizens. Smaller countries like Bolivia and Honduras also contribute to this change of direction.
According to the report, South and Central Asia is now the second most autocratic region in the world. More than nine out of ten people, or 93% of the population reside in electoral autocracies like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan. Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are closed autocracies, accounting for 4% of the regional population. A mere 3% reside in electoral democracies, including countries like Armenia, and Georgia, while only one country, Bhutan, is a liberal democracy. In 2023, only Mongolia descended from an electoral democracy regime type to the democratic “grey zone”.
Many of the autocratising countries are influential regional and global powers which have large populations, such as India, Mexico and South Korea. India’s process of autocratisation began in earnest from 2008 and characteristically proceeded in the incremental, slow-moving fashion of the “third wave”.
“Prime Minister Modi and his BJP is expected to win a third consecutive term. This could lead to further autocratisation given the already substantial democratic decline under Modi’s leadership and the enduring crackdown on minority rights and civil society,” the report said.
In the run-up to the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the report’s contents are alarming and underline the need for the civil society to make renewed efforts to uphold the Preamble of the Constitution, declaring India to be a sovereign, socialist, secular and democratic republic. With the BJP putting democracy in danger, the responsible citizens of the country need to arise, awake and stop the onslaught of Modi and his cohorts on the original idea of India, for which the freedom fighters made great sacrifices and laid down their lives.
