Can India remain Democracy’s poster child?

The reality is emerging that India's democracy is not only deeply flawed, it has regressed into what the V-Dem Institute calls "one of the worst autocratisers in the last 10 years".

Now that India's honeymoon with the West seems to be over, perhaps this is the time for the two nations of China and India to make peace on their boundary dispute and get their act together to take on the "self-appointed custodians of the world.

India is a top tier security partner for Australia and defence and security cooperation with India will be vital to security, prosperity and stability in the Indo-Pacific. – Australian Government, DPMC, 14 March 2023

"India – Mother of all democracies" according to Prime Minister Modi in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2021.

In a more recent address on the occasion of the unveiling of the logo, theme and website of India's G20 Presidency, Modi elaborated on India's role in the world.

It is our responsibility to introduce the world to India's thinking and strength, to India's culture and social power. It is our responsibility to enhance the knowledge of the world with the intellectualism of our thousands of years old culture and the modernity contained in it. The way we have lived the idea of 'Jai-Jagat' for centuries and millennia, today we have to bring it alive and present it to the modern world.

India and Modi have many admirers, especially among Australian and Western political leaders, policy analysts and media, even if they may be sceptical about the "thousands of years old" intellectualism of Indian culture and "the modernity contained in it".

"Biggest democracy in the world"; "exceptional and exemplary model of development"; the West's "preferred economic and strategic partner based on shared principles such as the rule of law"; "a country 'driven by norms, good governance, …openness, transparency and equality' – these and more accolades have been showered on the country.

Why India is the West's Democracy Role Model

Some of those touting India as the role model for democracy have done this not because they are fans of Indian style democracy or because they believe in the pro-India platitudes regularly trotted out in the "free world" media.

They have taken to marketing India to counter the rise of China and what they regard as the challenge by a communist system denounced for its 'limited' rights for its citizens but with the greatest poverty alleviation and development record in modern history which provides a different role model for developing nations.

This is especially repugnant to the West since China's rise and development are also seen as upsetting the current western dominated international economic and political order.

The contrary standards in dealing with China and India is perhaps best seen in the West's selective silence on developments in Kashmir whilst a focus on human rights violations and support for Uyghur dissidents continues unabated.

More recently, bromides on India's unique role as a model of democracy have been sprouted particularly on occasions such as when India joined the Quad, and during other similar initiatives aimed at containing China.

Playing to the Western gallery, Modi in his speech at the Quad summit in May 2022 described the Quad as "a force for global good" because "We [the four Quad countries] are united by our democratic values."

The Age editorial, 10 March 2023:

Albanese has enjoyed a display of "soft power" the likes of which only India can turn on: covered in flower petals at a holy festival, cheered by crowds at a cricket match, the first foreign leader to tour a particular flagship aircraft carrier and charmed by Bollywood stars in Mumbai. In return, he has …lavished praise on his hosts at every opportunity, calling his visit one of the "honours of my life" and praising the "magnificent nation of India".

India: one of the world's worst autocracies

But what is the value added democracy that Modi's government has introduced to India and the rest of the world?

The reality is emerging that India's democracy is not only deeply flawed, it has also regressed into what the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute calls "one of the worst autocratisers in the last 10 years". The Institute's 2023 report placed India in the bottom 40-50% on its Liberal Democracy Index at rank 97; 108 on the Electoral Democracy Index (below Tanzania, Bolivia, Mexico, Singapore and Nigeria) and 123 on the Egalitarian Component Index out of 179 countries

Perhaps the most disconcerting is the finding that religious freedom in India is at its lowest level since 1975. Long seen as a shining example of a secular state, in reality the Indian state has increasingly privileged Hinduism and trampled over the positions of other religions and religious communities.

Today, some Western media are beginning to view Modi's India through less rosy lenses. A recent opinion piece in the New York Times had the following conclusion:

Neoliberal policies have compounded inequality, with the state retreating from fundamental responsibilities such as health and education. This breeds a life of indignity and powerlessness for millions who take refuge in group identity, gravitate toward strong leaders promising to defend them against other groups and easily become hooked on the mass opioid of religious hatred now being used to redefine secular India as a Hindu state.

India's response

India's response to the recent downgrading of its democratic credentials can best be seen in this denunciation of the reports by Foreign Minister S Jaishankar at the India Today Conclave South 2021:

You use the dichotomy of democracy and autocracy. You want the truthful answer…it is called hypocrisy. Because you have a set of self-appointed custodians of the world, who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval, is not willing to play the game they want to be played.

So they invent their rules, their parameters, they pass their judgements and then make out as though this is some kind of global exercise.

Elsewhere, according to Jaishankar, the "two centuries of national humiliation" that the West inflicted upon India and the US$45 trillion estimated by Indian economist, Utsa Patnaik, that was drained and stolen from the sub continent by Britain are justifications for India's refusal to side with the West.

A large part of Jaishankar's response on India's domestic and international position can be seen to be not only not different but also very much a copy of how China has responded to western criticism of Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Falun Gong and other similar subjects of controversy.

Now that India's honeymoon with the West seems to be over, perhaps this is the time for the two nations to make peace on their boundary dispute and get their act together to take on the "self-appointed custodians of the world".

This could open an entirely new page in both nations' and the Asia Pacific's history.