MARCH 11, 2021
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. | Anindito Mukherjee/Reuters
India has been classified as an “electoral autocracy” alongside Hungary and Turkey in the annual report from Sweden-based V-Dem Institute because of “restrictions on multiple facets of democracy” such as civil society groups and free speech.
V-Dem Institute said India registered a 23-percentage point drop on its 0-to-1 Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) scale, marking “one of the most dramatic shifts among all countries in the world over the past 10 years”.
The V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute, an independent research organization founded in 2014 by Swedish political scientist Staffan Lindberg, produces its annual report on the state of democracy around the world based on a dataset of almost 30 million data points for 202 countries.
“The world’s largest democracy turned into an electoral autocracy: India with 1.37 billion citizens,” the report said. India was previously classified as an electoral democracy.
V-Dem Institute’s report comes close on the heels of the annual report on global political rights and liberties by US-based Freedom House, which downgraded India’s status as a democracy and free society to “partly free”. There was no immediate response from Indian officials to the V-Dem Institute report.
Courtesy/Source: Hindustan times
