Democracy has been given a major blow, states the EIU report. Almost 70% of the countries covered by the report recorded a decline in their overall score. This was mainly perpetrated as many countries went into lockdown in 2020 due to the detestable COVID-19 pandemic .
India fell to 51st position in EIU’s Democracy Index in 2019. India’s overall score fell from 7.23 in 2018 to 6.90 on the index for the year 2019-20. The primary reason stated for India’s fall by 10 places is the erosion of civil liberties in the country.
The democracy index is an index compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). EIU is the research division of the Economist group, a UK based Private company which publishes The Economist. The index seeks to measure the state of democracy in 167 countries, of which 166 are sovereign states and 164 are UN member states.
The index takes different categories into consideration like pluralism, civil liberties and political culture.
India was presented with the assessment of “flawed democracy”. This could have various reasons ranging from the bifurcating of Jammu and Kashmir last year to the CAA-NCR act and the contentious farm laws. India , during recent times has been the topic of contentious deliberation for its heated policies.
India attracted criticism from turkey and Malaysia for its kashmir issue . But well ,this ill -informed and undiplomatic remarks on the Kashmir contentious issues were met by India’s stern rebukes. In addition to it German chancellor Angela Merkel and now Vice President elect Kamala Harris expressed apprehensions by stating their constant state of monitoring of India’s policies. Similarly, India severely rebuked Mr. Justin Trudeau’s for his unpolitical remarks on the farm laws.
With such rebukes and stern consideration of India’s policies abroad, India is bound to rank low on the list.
USA too recently slipped into the tag of “flawed economy” due to its recent election drama that played on the world political stage. America ,throughout, has been the propagator of human rights and democracy around the world. But the incidents at Capitol stripped America of its moral high ground. This certainly goes at length to speak about the temporary nature of law and order in a society, that is bound to change at a sudden instant of clash of political aspirations.
China ranks the lowest and has been presented with the title of “authoritative government”. China’s civil rights violation of the uighur Muslims, undemocratic clampdown on the Hong Kong protest movement and tenacious web surveillance of its public, attribute’s china its authoritative nature. Recent authoritative territorial expansion ambitions of China have led it to be enunciated by the world diaspora. Its recent clashes in the Galwan valley speak volumes of its undemocratic policies and hence it’s position in the world democracy index.
France, recently found itself in troubled waters with clashes between religious groups on ‘freedom to speech’. This led France to clampdown on radical islamists in an unprecedented undemocratic manner and to provide unrestrained power to the police administration. This led France to be another country to be classified as one of the ‘flawed democracy’.
Taiwan on the other hand was ranked as the most democratic country in East Asia. The other two countries to be found under the tag of ‘full democracies’ in east Asia were Japan and South Korea ranked 21 and 23 respectively.