Recently, India has been experiencing some forms of democratic backsliding. According to Nancy Bermeo’s “On Democratic Backsliding”, she depicts democratic backsliding as “the weakening and disassembling of a given set of democratic institutions”. Democratic backsliding can involve several factors, including the erosion of democratic institutions and norms, mutual toleration, and political parties, such as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, exerting political influence and abusing power. Due to the BJP’s intense conflicts with the political opposition, it has consistently refused to recognize the Indian National Congress Party as a legitimate electoral opponent. Although India has maintained a period of democratic consolidation, it has gradually transitioned towards an autocratic regime through several means, including the use of national-level functions to hinder political parties’ electoral efforts and the undermining of democratic norms.
Through these processes and actions, India has increasingly been classified as a “partly free” democracy. This means that while India hosts multiparty elections, its government and political parties are characterized by limited civil liberties and freedoms, a weak sense of the rule of law, and the harassment of political opposition. This type of regime is explained through Larry Diamond, in “Elections Without Democracy: Thinking about Hybrid Regimes, where it refers to “a type of hybrid regime “in that the existence of formally democratic political institutions, such as multiparty competition, masks (often, in part, to legitimate) the reality of authoritarian domination. All such regimes lack an area of contestation sufficiently open, free, and fair so that the ruling party can be readily turned out of power….” (Diamond, 24). Diamond’s analysis reflects the current state of democratic backsliding in India, as India hosts multiparty elections. Still, there is an insufficient amount of democratic values, such as free and fair elections and freedom of speech and expression.
For instance, according to a Freedom House article written by Kian Vesteinsson, it was highlighted that weeks before the official launch of India’s 2024 general election campaign, the party leaders of the Indian National Congress, currently the largest opposition party, announced that the party’s accounts had been frozen by tax authorities over a payment dispute, locking away around 2.1 billion rupees. The move exposed the tax authority’s actions, particularly under Modi’s administration, who oversees India’s tax authorities, including the use of regulatory enforcement to close off the space for dissent nationwide. According to Ozan Varol’s Stealth Authoritarianism, it can help shed light on this issue, as it highlights that, “Historically, authoritarian leaders used formal rules to constrain rogue bureaucratic agents, who operated the government…In other words, laws were deployed, not to regulate and constrain the government, but to enable it to constrain others and ensure their compliance with government authority…The formal rules in rule-by-law regimes typically reflect their authoritarian nature with “brutal candor”. Through this analysis, the tax authority, under Prime Minister Modi, implemented legitimate rules and regulations against the largest opposition party; it specifically sought to disrupt the opposition party’s campaign outreach and efforts to gain influence by restricting access to its financial resources, a legal method that constrained the Indian National Congress’s ability to campaign because of a pending tax case. This might appear fraudulent and abusive because, although the technique of freezing an asset, in this case, the funds and bank account, is technically legal, in the broader picture, it raises concerns about the fairness of the 2024 election in India, as the government’s decisions appear autocratic and politically charged to undermine their efforts during the campaign for the election.
Another way India has been experiencing democratic backsliding is through the erosion of an informal democratic norm, Mutual Toleration. Mutual Toleration in How Democracies Die, chapter 6, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, refers to “the idea that as long as our rivals play by constitutional rules, we accept that they have an equal right to exist, compete for power, and govern……It means that even if we believe our opponents’ ideas to be foolish or wrong-headed, we do not view them as an existential threat….When norms of toleration are weak, democracy is hard to sustain. If we view our rivals as a dangerous threat, we have much to fear if they are elected. We may decide to employ any means necessary to defeat them–and therein lies a justification for authoritarian measures”. This definition of mutual toleration helps reflect and illuminate the situation of democratic backsliding in India. Heightened tensions between the Indian National Congress Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) help explain the concept. Political tensions rose in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, where around 30 to 40 BJP members were staging a protest near the Congress Bhawan at the Master Canteen. Tensions began to surface over the exchange of fierce slogans, escalating into an intense, hostile clash, with workers from both parties throwing stones and cow dung at each other, and several party workers subsequently engaging in a brawl. The situation demonstrates that if the institutional norm of mutual toleration is weak, as in India, there would be physical hostilities in areas without pre-existing party conflicts. Therefore, hostile disputes like this represent a shift from democratic procedures and processes to throwing stones and inflicting physical damage, thereby undermining the informal democratic norm of Mutual toleration.
All in all, India’s democratic trend has been on a downward trajectory as seen through several lenses, such as the erosion of the democratic norm, mutual toleration by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, the failure to recognize political opponents as legitimate electoral rivals, respect their rights to compete, and view them as equal rather than existential enemies. Additionally, India’s declining democratic trend can also be seen through the restriction of political campaign funds, as India’s tax authority froze the funds of the Indian National Congress, the largest opposition party. As a result, the tax department, controlled by India’s government, used seemingly legal and legitimate mechanisms to target and attack the Indian National Congress party. Therefore, as India’s government gradually adopts anti-democratic methods, it contributes to the erosion of democracy in India.
This is a really insightful and well-based analysis of India’s current situation, and I am in agreement that it is not a good one. I especially found it interesting to see you discussing money being used as a means for democratic undermining — up until now I had never looked into any such cases.