V-Dem Democracy Report 2023

• V-Dem Democracy Report: Data of V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute at Sweden’s University shows that democratic values in India have eroded significantly in recent years.
•  Democratic Values’ Indexes:  There are 5 indexes used by V-Dem to capture democratic values in India.
  • Deliberative Democracy Index: Measures whether political decisions are made through public reasoning or emotional appeals and coercion.
  •  Egalitarian Democracy Index: Examines equal access to rights and liberties.
    • India ranked 123 on this Index.
  •  Electoral Democracy Index:  Evaluates election cleanliness and lack of fraud.
    • India’s ranking dipped from the 100 in 2022 to 108th in 2023 in this Index.
  • Liberal Democracy Index (LDI): Protection of individual and minority rights against State tyranny.  It uses 71 indicators such as free and fair elections, political and civil rights.
    •  Denmark ranked 1st.
    • India ranked 97th in LDI.
  • Participatory Democracy Index: Measures active citizen engagement in electoral and non-electoral political processes.
•  In all these indexes, 0 is the lowest value and 1 the highest.
• The values of these indexes have been declining since 2014 in India.

• Digital Society Indexes: There are 4 indexes which measure the change in digital society variables over time. All the scores for India have declined steeply post 2014.
  • Arrest for Political Content: In 2022, a citizen is “likely” to be arrested for posting political content online which is critical of the government as India’s score stood at 1.05.
  • Govt Internet Shut Down Practice: In 2022, the government “sometimes” shut down domestic access to the Internet as India’s score stood at 1.98.
  • Govt Internet Filtering Practice:  In 2022, government censored political information on the Internet “sometimes” to “often” as India’s score stood at 1.45.
  • Dissemination of False Information: The government used social media “about half the time” to disseminate false information to influence its own population in 2022.
• Press Freedom Indexes: Press freedom has eroded in India in recent years.
  • Media Bias:  For India, this Index was 2.3 in 2022, on a scale of 0 (highly biased towards the government) to 4 (impartial coverage).
  • Harassment of Journalists: In 2022, this index for India was 1.5 on a scale of 0 (no journalists dare to engage in critical coverage) to 1 (never harassed).
  • Critical Print Media:  This Index measures how many major print and broadcast outlets routinely criticize the government. India scored 1.96 (where 0 is none to 4 showing all outlets).
  • Govt Censorship for Media:  This index measures whether the government directly or indirectly attempts to censor the print or broadcast media. India scored 1.48 where 0 indicates routinely and 4 means rarely.

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