Today’s India is an “illiberal democracy”. Freedom House, the US think-tank, puts it at the same level as Hungary, whose leader, Viktor Orbán, invented that phrase. But it rates the components differently: political rights, notably electoral politics, are healthier in India than in Hungary, but civil rights are weaker. Worse, the latter have deteriorated substantially under BJP rule since 2014. India’s ratings on democracy are still far higher than those of, say, Bangladesh, Pakistan or Turkey. But it is not a “liberal democracy”: Freedom House simply labels the country “partly free”.
Yet, as India’s polity has become less liberal, its government has become more effective. World Bank indicators show that “political stability and absence of violence”, “control of corruption”, “regulatory quality” and “government effectiveness” have improved since Narendra Modi became prime minister. But “voice and accountability” and “rule of law” have worsened. His government is more repressive and more effective than its predecessors
As Ashutosh Varshney of Brown University notes in “India’s Democratic Longevity and Its Troubled Trajectory”, the country’s vigorous democracy was an anomaly. It should not have lasted in an agricultural country with a significant rate of illiteracy. Yes, this democracy was imperfect, with high levels of corruption and violence, not to mention Indira Gandhi’s “emergency” in the mid-1970s. But it worked.