Context: V-Dem Democracy Report has categorised India as an Electoral Autocracy. However, the Indian government has criticised the report and now plans to release its own democracy index, which is assumed to help India “counter recent downgrades in ratings and severe criticisms by international groups”.
About V-Dem’s Democracy report:
- Advances in global levels of democracy made over the last 35 years have been wiped out.
- 72% of the world’s population – 5.7 billion people – live in autocracies by 2022.
- 13% of the population – 1 billion people – live in liberal democracies.
- The level of democracy enjoyed by the average global citizen in 2022 is down to 1986 levels.
- The decline is most dramatic in the Asia-Pacific region, which is back to levels last recorded in 1978.
- Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, are back to levels last seen around the end of the Cold War.
- India has one of the worst autocratizers in the last 10 years.
V-Dem Democracy Report is based on five sub-indices:
- The Electoral Democracy Index: This index whether elections were free and fair, as well as the prevalence of a free and independent media. This index is part of all the other indices as a central component of democracy.
- Liberal Democracy Index: This index incorporates measures of rule of law, checks and balances and civil liberties.
- Participatory Democracy Index: This index measures the degree to which citizens participate in their own government through local democratic institutions, civil society organizations, and direct democracy.
- Deliberative Democracy Index: This index measures the degree to which decisions are made in the best interest of the people as opposed to due to coercion or narrow interest groups, in addition to the basic electoral democracy index.
- Egalitarian Democracy Index: This index measures the level of equal access to resources, power, and freedoms across various groups within a society, in addition to the level of electoral democracy.
Other Democracy indices:
- Freedom in the World Report by Freedom House.
- Democracy Index by Economic Intelligence Unit.
- Worldwide Governance indicators by World Bank.
