{"id":11325,"date":"2022-12-26T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-26T05:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/?p=11325"},"modified":"2022-12-08T16:57:36","modified_gmt":"2022-12-08T11:27:36","slug":"the-way-western-think-tanks-are-wrong-about-indian-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/2022\/12\/26\/the-way-western-think-tanks-are-wrong-about-indian-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"The way Western Think Tanks are Wrong About Indian Democracy!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/shutterstock_2001348290-1536x1025-1-1024x683.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-11326\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/shutterstock_2001348290-1536x1025-1-1024x683.webp 1024w, https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/shutterstock_2001348290-1536x1025-1-300x200.webp 300w, https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/shutterstock_2001348290-1536x1025-1-768x513.webp 768w, https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/shutterstock_2001348290-1536x1025-1.webp 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>When India was recently downgraded in global democracy rankings, it created a perfect storm within the academic and media establishments. The three democracy-ranking institutes that published the reports \u2013 Sweden\u2019s Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem), the Economist Intelligence Unit and the US government-funded think tank Freedom House \u2013 were feted by all those opposed to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Supporters of the BJP dismissed these reports as yet another attempt to discredit India by hostile entities that feel increasingly threatened by the country\u2019s unstoppable rise on the world stage under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reports cited human rights violations, oppression of religious minorities and muzzling of free speech and other factors to cast their verdict on the depressing state of the world\u2019s largest democracy. V-Dem went to claim that India was no longer a liberal democracy, dubbing it an \u201celectoral autocracy\u201d on par with Russia. Freedom House declared that India was only \u201cpartially free\u201d, ranking it 85th in the world.<ins>These think tanks are not alone in sounding the bugle on India\u2019s deteriorating democracy.&nbsp;<em>The New York Times<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>The Washington Post<\/em>&nbsp;routinely describe the country as a dystopian hellscape teeming with Nazi-like Hindu storm troopers crushing dissent and criticism under the weight of their jackboots. But how accurate is this picture?&nbsp;<\/ins><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When India was recently downgraded in global democracy rankings, it created a perfect storm within the academic and media establishments. The three democracy-ranking institutes that published the reports \u2013 Sweden\u2019s Varieties of Democracy Institute (V-Dem), the Economist Intelligence Unit and the US government-funded think tank Freedom House \u2013 were feted by all those opposed to &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[15482,15484,201,15485],"class_list":["post-11325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india-news","tag-bjp","tag-democracy","tag-india","tag-western"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11325"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11413,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11325\/revisions\/11413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zaanews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}