India falls steeply on freedom index; ranked along with Iran, Sudan, Senegal

India’s record has shown a massive decline among world’s 25 largest democracies in the new report by Freedom House, the oldest American organisation dedicated to the support and defence of democracy around the world, a report in The Telegraph stated.

America based Freedom House has placed India among “countries in the spotlight’’ along with Haiti, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, Tunisia, Turkey, Hong Kong and Ukraine. This category shows a list of the countries where important developments have affected their democratic nature and deserve special observation in 2020.

According to the report by Freedom House, there are three reasons behind this steep fall: Abrogation of article 370, which gave a special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, the implementation of the National Register of Citizens(NRC) in Assam and the implementation of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA).

India has ranked 83rd in the ‘Freedom in the World 2020’ report along with Timor-Leste and Senegal. This is near the bottom of the list of the countries categorised as “Free”, with only Tunisia receiving a lower score. India fell sharply by four points, the worst decline among the world’s 25 largest democracies this year.

Whilst half of the world’s democratic countries have seen a degradation of their scores, India’s drop is the sharpest and could “blur the values-based distinction between Beijing and New Delhi’’, the India chapter in the Freedom in the World 2020 report noted.

It was mainly because of the conduct of elections, that India received a “Free” rating. But this report tersely criticises Modi government for pushing the country away from the “founding commitment to pluralism and individual rights, without which democracy cannot long survive”.

The report says, “Almost since the turn of the century, the United States and its allies have courted India as a potential strategic partner and democratic counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific region. However, the Indian government’s alarming departures from democratic norms under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) could blur the values-based distinction between Beijing and New Delhi”.

The report also links democratic India to dictatorial China for eradicating pluralism. It says, “Just as Chinese officials vocally defended acts of state repression against Uighurs and other Muslim groups before international audiences in 2019, Modi firmly rejected criticism of his Hindu nationalist policies, which included a series of new measures that affected India’s Muslim populations from one end of the country to the other.’’

The report notes, “Several of India’s neighbours have persecuted religious minorities for many years. But instead of stressing the contrast with its own traditions and seeking to propagate them abroad, India is moving toward the lower standards of its region.’’

Freedom House shows the new union territory of Jammu and Kashmir as having experienced one of the five largest single-year score declines of the past 10 years, and “its freedom status dropped to not free”.

The Freedom House report also refers to the statements made by Union home minister Amit Shah, particularly his pledge to repeat the Assam NRC process nationwide although subsequently, Prime Minister Modi has said that there has been no discussion on it within his government yet.

Freedom House is an old and reputed organisation formed in New York in 1941 with the aim to promote American involvement in World War II and the fight against fascism. The Freedom in the World report — brought out annually since 1971 — maps the level of freedom in each country.