'One of the Worst Autocratisers': Is V-Dem's Analysis of Indian Democracy Fair?

The latest report, while worth heeding, may nevertheless be a bit premature in its overall judgement.

This assessment of India’s democracy comes at a particularly fraught moment as it is on the verge of embarking on its national election.

(Photo: Erum Gour/The Quint)

Last week, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), the Swedish organisation based at the University of Gothenburg, released its annual report which again characterised India as an “electoral autocracy”. Since 2018, V-Dem has used this moniker to describe the state of India’s democracy. In its latest report, it has referred to India as one of “the worst autocratisers”.

Worse still, it has been held that India is one of the top ten countries in the world that was headed in an autocratic direction. To compound matters, the country has been ranked at 104 between Niger and the Ivory Coast. Consequently, it is not particularly surprising that the latest affirmation of the country’s status as that of an “electoral autocracy” has caused some consternation amongst Indian officials and also segments of the Indian press.

This assessment of India’s democracy comes at a particularly fraught moment as it is on the verge of embarking on its national election. Based on several reliable polls it is all but certain that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is likely to return to power.

Is V-Dem’s assessment of democracy and its discontents fair? Some scholars have argued that with some minor limitations, the methodology that the organisation uses for assessing the state of a country’s democracy is both reliable and valid. Among other matters, it has developed measurable indices for a host of forms of democracy including electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative and egalitarian.

It is beyond the scope of this brief discussion to examine and analyse each of these variants. However, most scholars who study democracy and its differing forms would not quibble with these representations.

Besides V-Dem, assessments by various other global organisations have in the past decade or so raised concerns about the workings of Indian democracy. For example, the respected New York-based human rights organisation, Freedom House, has for several years highlighted growing democratic deficits in the country. Its most recent report, however, while critical of a number of features of democracy in India, nevertheless, described it as a “multiparty democracy”.

Other, equally respected human rights organisations, most notably Amnesty International, have also been sounding the alarm about the democratic recession in India.

A Handful of Salient Examples May Challenge V-Dem's Assessment

Faced with these persistent charges of the decline of India’s democracy, the government, on occasion, has hit back against its critics. Some of its reactions to the characterisation of aspects of India’s democracy are not entirely off the mark. For example, the current Minister of External Affairs, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, quite correctly took umbrage when Reporters Without Borders rated India’s press freedom index lower than that of Afghanistan.

Even a lay but informed individual would be forced to take issue with this ranking. Indeed, dubious assessments of this order undermine more legitimate questions about the current state of India’s democratic institutions, mores and practices.

That being said, is all well with the state of India’s democracy? Are all international human rights and related rating organisations entirely off the mark in their depictions and assessments of where India’s democracy stands and is headed? Any dispassionate judgment would be forced to take a more nuanced position. For example, it is possible to question aspects of V-Dem’s methodology which has led it to conclude that India has been an “electoral autocracy” since 2018. This description, in all fairness, may well be somewhat sweeping and overly harsh.

A handful of salient examples may challenge the assessment. The Indian Supreme Court, which had long had a reputation for its prickly independence, has come under much criticism for a range of recent judgments including its landmark decision which favoured the government on building a temple in Ayodhya on the site of the destroyed Babri Masjid.

However, its judgments have not uniformly favoured the government in office. Most recently, in mid-February of this year, in a stunning decision, it struck down the government’s electoral bond scheme.

Not content with this directive, it has been relentless in insisting that the State Bank of India, the repository of these bonds, release the complete data to the Election Commission. These actions on the part of the country’s apex judicial body do not accord well with the depiction of a country that is now and has been for several years an “electoral autocracy”.

This is not the only example that can be adduced to question the harsh assessment of India’s political dispensation. As the national election approaches, it is worth bearing in mind that despite its extraordinary popularity in northern and parts of western India, the ruling party has not been able to make significant inroads into India’s south and parts of the east.

Opposition parties, despite the highly diminished stature of the Congress, which rules in only three states, nevertheless remain robust. The BJP may well wish to demolish these opposition strongholds in its relentless quest to dominate the country’s politics like a colossus, but it has not succeeded in that endeavour — as yet.

Finally, despite the government’s attempts to squelch any number of dissidents who have challenged its policies, India’s civil society activists have yet to give up the ghost. Indeed, a recent Bombay High Court judgment dismissed the charges against the activist professor G N Saibaba and others on charges of abetting terror. It even refused to stay the judgement despite a plea from the state of Maharashtra.

There is little question that all is not well with India’s democratic institutions and practices. Many of the charges that have been levelled about democratic backsliding in India cannot be simply dismissed out of hand. If several of the current trends, which are downright disturbing, continue apace, India may well become an “electoral autocracy” — a state which does hold regular elections, but where questions can be raised about their fairness.

Therefore, the latest V-Dem report, while worth heeding, may nevertheless be a bit premature in its overall judgement.

(Sumit Ganguly holds the Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations at Indiana University, Bloomington and is a Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)