India has been one of the “worst autocratisers” in the world in recent years, said Sweden-based Varieties of Democracy Institute in a report released on Thursday.
According to the report titled “Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot,” India has remained an “electoral autocracy” at the end of 2023 after first being categorised as one in 2018.
The report defines an electoral autocracy as one in which multiparty elections for the executive exist but there are “insufficient levels of fundamental requisites such as freedom of expression and association, and free and fair elections.”
“India, with 18% of the world’s population, accounts for about half of the population living in autocratising countries,” the report said.
The report categorises countries based on four phases between democratisation and autocratisation: liberal democracy, electoral democracy, electoral autocracy and closed autocracy.
The Hindu nationalist government in India has used laws on sedition, defamation, and counterterrorism to silence critics, the report pointed out.
“The BJP government undermined the constitution’s commitment to secularism by amending the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in 2019,” it said.
The Sweden-based institute said that India, along with El Salvador and Mauritius, was among the worst government offendors when it came to increasing efforts to censor the press.
The V-Dem report said that the Indian government also continued to suppress the freedom of religion. “Intimidation of political opponents and people protesting government policies, as well as silencing of dissent in academia are now prevalent,” it added.
“Over the years, India’s autocratization 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 and intimidation of the opposition,” read the report.
India also ranked in the bottom 40% to 50% of countries in the institute’s Liberal Democracy Index for 2023.
