The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) released 2020 Democracy Index global rankings. According to EIU, India has slipped to 53rd place in the Democracy Index of 2020.
The EIU said, "democratic backsliding" and "crackdowns" on civil liberties led to decline of the country on the Index. Although, the rank of India is better than its neighboring nations but it is a cause of concern because rankings have been released at a time when the farmers are protesting at borders around Delhi for more than two months now.
The EIU said, "With mounting pressure on India's democratic norms, India's score fell from a peak of 7.92 in 2014 to 6.61 in 2020 and its global ranking slipped from 27th (in 2014) to 53rd as a result of democratic backsliding."
India scored 6.61 in 2020 while its score was comparatively higher in 2019 i.e 6.9.
The list of 165 independent states and two territories is topped by Norway. Iceland and Sweden followed the Norway in second and third spots respectively. The total score of Norway is 9.81 while the score of Iceland is 9.37 and Sweden is 9.26.
According to the information on EIU website, "the Democracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Based on their scores on 60 indicators within these categories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types of regime: full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime or authoritarian regime."
North Korea scored least 1.08 score in the Democracy Index and it is at the bottom of the list. India has been dubbed as 'flawed democracy' along with countries such as US, France, Belgium among others.
It has been mentioned in the report that in India and Thailand, "democratic backsliding by the authorities and crackdowns on civil liberties led to a further decline in their global rankings". The EIU report added, the government led by Narendra Modi "introduced a religious element to the conceptualisation of Indian citizenship, a step that many critics see as undermining the secular basis of the Indian state."
It also said that the handling of the pandemic led to further erosion of civil liberties in India. The rank of India in 2019 was 51st.