India improves rank in democracy index; civil liberties curtailed: EIU

But India's political culture is worse than some sub-Saharan African nations, authoritarian regimes

A white paper titled ‘Democracy Index 2016: Revenge Of The Deplorables’ published by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a sister concern of The Economist magazine has yet again termed India a flawed democracy. In the index published by the magazine, India is ranked 32 out 165 nations. The index, published annually by the newspaper, gauges the strength of a nation’s democracy on the basis of five parameters. (See Table 1). Last year India was ranked 35 on the same index.

Table 1: India's political culture worse than Sub-Saharan Africa
 

These parameters include electoral processes, functioning of government, political participation, political culture and civil liberties.

India, although ranked below the United States of America (USA) on the overall index, scores better than the USA on all parameters except one. India’s political culture is worse than some authoritarian regimes like China and Sub Saharan African nations like Sierra Leone. 

The report suggests that since the Narendra Modi government came to power, there has been a significant improvement in functioning of the government and political participation in India. However, this has been accompanied by a decline in civil liberties and political culture.  

The report had downgraded India’s political culture in 2015. In 2016, the report hasn’t further downgraded the score but it continues to be below the levels reached in 2014. While determining a country’s political culture, the EIU takes into account the perception of leadership in a country among other factors. To determine the perception about a country’s leadership, it calculates (through a survey), the proportion of the population that desires a strong leader who bypasses elections and the parliament. 

Additionally, it relies on the World Values Survey (WVS) to determine another aspect that determines the perception about a country’s leadership. It seeks data from the WVS about the proportion of a country’s population that thinks “it would be fairly good to have a strong leader who doesn’t bother with parliament or elections.”  

If the The Economist's Democracy Index over the years were to be studied, it suggests that India continues to be a flawed democracy. In 2009 when the Manmohan Singh led UPA-2 government was in power, India was ranked 35 among 165 nations. Today it is ranked 32. India’s political culture had declined in 2011 and 2012 to levels lower than many authoritarian and hybrid regimes. It rebounded in 2014, before it started sliding again (see Table 2). 

Table 2: Is India becoming a better democracy?
 

A catch in India’s improved performance on this index is the decline of civil liberties under the Modi administration. Although India scores better than many developed nations like Japan and France, there has been a gradual decline in civil liberties under the Modi government as compared to the Manmohan Singh regime.