The Freedom in the World 2020report, released on Tuesday, March 4, has slashed India’s score to 71/100, from the previous 75/100. Alarmingly, India’s score showed the biggest decline among the world’s 25 largest democracies.
While India scored 34 out of 40 points in the political rights category, it only scored 37 out of 60 in the civil liberties category.
The report, released by Freedom House a United States government-funded NGO, assessed political rights and civil liberties of 210 countries and territories worldwide. Of the 195 countries, 83 of them were rated as “free”, 63 as “partly free”, and 49 as “not free”. It said that in the last decade, the share of countries rated free has declined by 3 per cent.
“India has long been viewed as a potential democratic counterweight to authoritarian China in the Indo-Pacific region, but the current Indian government’s alarming departures from democratic norms are blurring the values-based distinction between Beijing and New Delhi,” the report said.
The report gives three of Narendra Modi government’s actions as reasons for the decline: the passage of the new citizenship law, the implementation of the National Register of Citizens in Assam, and the abrogation of the autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir.
The report further ranked Kashmir as “not free”. It said that Kashmir, which is assessed separately, “experienced one of the five largest single-year declines of the last decade anywhere in the world, and the territory’s freedom status dropped from Partly Free to Not Free.”
The report criticised the United States for the 2019 rule changes that weakened the rights of asylum seekers, new evidence of electoral interference, and escalating clashes between the executive branch and Congress over their respective powers.
“India and the United States are the largest and perhaps the most influential democracies in the world, and their drift from liberal democratic ideals is sending exactly the wrong message,” said Mike Abramowitz, president of Freedom House.
“If major democratic powers fail to set strong examples and provide constructive leadership, it will be impossible to reverse the global trends that threaten freedom for all societies,” Abramowitz added.