Autocratisation Goes Viral: Report:
India has been classified as an “electoral autocracy” in the annual report named Autocratisation Goes Viral of Sweden-based Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute.
- This report comes just after the US watchdog Freedom House downgraded India’s status to “partly free” in its ‘Freedom in the World 2021’ report.
- The V-Dem Institute, an independent research organization founded in 2014 by Swedish political scientist Staffan Lindberg.
- It 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 global decline of liberal democracies was ‘steep’ in the past 10 years in the Asia-Pacific region, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America.
- Apart from India, countries like Brazil and Turkey figured among the top 10 countries that slipped in rankings that were part of the G-20 nations.
- India was previously classified as an electoral democracy, however, the latest report classified it as an electoral autocracy.
- India is now as autocratic as is Pakistan, and worse than both its neighbors Bangladesh and Nepal.
- Political rights and civil liberties in the country have deteriorated since 2014, with increased pressure on human rights organizations, rising intimidation of academics and journalists, and a spate of bigoted attacks, including lynchings, aimed at Muslims.
