Congress leader Rahul Gandhi delivered a lecture titled ‘Learning to Listen in the 21st Century’ at the University of Cambridge on February 28, 2023. He stated that there were constraints on the institutional framework required for a democratic Parliament, free press and judiciary in India. The Bharatiya Janata Party demanded an apology from Mr. Gandhi for his comments. This is also one of the reasons why Parliament is in a logjam.
The crux of the debate is whether or not India’s democratic values have eroded in recent years. Data from the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg show that democratic values have eroded significantly in recent years in India.
Chart 1 depicts five indexes used by V-Dem to capture democratic values in India. The deliberative democracy index measures whether political decisions are made through public reasoning or emotional appeals and coercion. The egalitarian democracy index examines equal access to rights and liberties. The electoral democracy index evaluates election cleanliness and lack of fraud. The liberal democracy index measures the protection of individual and minority rights against state tyranny. The participatory democracy index measures active citizen engagement in electoral and non-electoral political processes. In all these indexes, 0 is the lowest value and 1 the highest. As shown in the chart, the values of these indexes have been declining since 2014. In 2022, they reached the levels last seen during the 1975 Emergency.
Chart 1
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Chart 2 depicts four indexes which measure the change in digital society variables over time. In 2022, a citizen is “likely” to be arrested for posting political content online which is critical of the government as India’s score stood at 1.05 (0: extremely likely; 1: likely; 2: unlikely; 3: extremely unlikely). In 2022, the government “sometimes” shut down domestic access to the Internet as the score stood at 1.98 (0: extremely often; to 4: almost never). In 2022, the government censored political information on the Internet “sometimes” to “often.” India’s score in this stood at 1.45 (0: extremely often to 4: almost never). Also, the government and its agents used social media “about half the time” to disseminate misleading viewpoints or false information to influence its own population in 2022. India’s score was 1.68 (0: extremely often to 4: never or almost never). All the lines have declined steeply post 2014 as seen in the chart.
Chart 2
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In Chart 3, the media bias index in India stood at 2.3 in 2022, on a scale of 0 (highly biased towards the government) to 4 (impartial coverage). In 2022, the harassment of journalists index stood at 1.5 on a scale of 0 (no journalists dare to engage in critical coverage) to 1 (never harassed). On the index that measures how many major print and broadcast outlets routinely criticise the government, India scored 1.96 (where 0 is none to 4 showing all outlets). In the index that measures whether the government directly or indirectly attempts to censor the print or broadcast media, India scored 1.48 where 0 indicates routinely and 4 means rarely. The chart shows that press freedom has eroded in India in recent years.
Chart 3
Chart 4 plots the liberal democracy index in 2014 and 2022 on a scatter chart. The red dots correspond to nations whose values eroded, the blue dots are countries which recorded increases in democratic values and the rest remained more or less the same. India is among the countries which recorded significant erosion in this period along with Greece, Brazil, Poland and the Philippines.
Chart 4
vignesh.r@thehindu.co.in
Source: V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg
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