The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) released 2020Democracy Index global rankings. According to EIU, India has slipped to 53rdplace 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, therank of India is better than its neighboring nations but it is a cause ofconcern because rankings have been released at a time when the farmers areprotesting at borders around Delhi for more than two months now.
The EIU said, "With mounting pressure on India'sdemocratic norms, India's score fell from a peak of 7.92 in 2014 to 6.61 in2020 and its global ranking slipped from 27th (in 2014) to 53rd as a result ofdemocratic backsliding."
India scored 6.61 in 2020 while its score was comparativelyhigher in 2019 i.e 6.9.
The list of 165 independent states and two territories istopped by Norway. Iceland and Sweden followed the Norway in second and thirdspots respectively. The total score of Norway is 9.81 while the score ofIceland is 9.37 and Sweden is 9.26.
According to the information on EIU website, "theDemocracy Index is based on five categories: electoral process and pluralism,civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, andpolitical culture. Based on their scores on 60 indicators within thesecategories, each country is then itself classified as one of four types ofregime: full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime or authoritarianregime."
North Korea scored least 1.08 score in the DemocracyIndex and it is at the bottom of the list. India has been dubbed as 'flaweddemocracy' along with countries such as US, France, Belgium among others.
It has been mentioned in the report that in India andThailand, "democratic backsliding by the authorities and crackdowns oncivil liberties led to a further decline in their global rankings". The EIU report added, the government led byNarendra Modi "introduced a religious element to the conceptualisation ofIndian citizenship, a step that many critics see as undermining the secularbasis of the Indian state."
It also said that the handling of the pandemic led tofurther erosion of civil liberties in India. The rank of India in 2019 was51st.