There's something rotten in India

I rarely blog anything about India because, well, I have practically given up on the old country.  There was so much hope and promise ... but, the saffronization of every aspect of life in India has ended all the hope and promise.

The last time I commented on India's democracy was in September 2018.  I wrote in that post that India was practically in the kind of "emergency rule" that Indira Gandhi imposed on the country.  I quoted Arundhati Roy: "The vulnerable are being cordoned off and silenced. The vociferous are being incarcerated. God help us to get our country back."  

If god favors only the Hindus, then Roy will not be getting her country back. 

The world's largest democracy has been transformed into a combination of cult-worship and "electoral autocracy."  The BBC's Soutik Biswas reports:

Earlier this month, in its annual report on global political rights and liberties, US-based non-profit Freedom House downgraded India from a free democracy to a "partially free democracy".

Last week, Sweden-based V-Dem Institute was harsher in its latest report on democracy. It said India had become an "electoral autocracy". And last month, India, described as a "flawed democracy", slipped two places to 53rd position in the latest Democracy Index published by The Economist Intelligence Unit.

Sure, one could raise all kinds of questions about the methods used in these reports.  But, when report after report concludes that democracy in India is increasingly flawed, and that the country is only partially free, then there is something awful going on in the old country, right?

Writing on "the decay of Indian democracy," Milan Vaishnav adds to the power of the cult figure:

[Voters] didn’t necessarily judge Modi on his record in office. Instead, the force of Modi’s character inspired them to look forward and imagine what transformations he might engender.

Would the BJP’s dominance be as comprehensive if Modi were not in the picture? The answer is likely no. 

Decay!

US Senator Bob Menendez, who chairs the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee, is not happy:

The Indian government’s ongoing crackdown on farmers peacefully protesting new farming laws and corresponding intimidation of journalists and government critics only underscores the deteriorating situation of democracy in India.  Moveover, in recent years, rising anti-Muslim sentiment and related government actions like the Citizenship Amendment Act, the suppression of political dialogue and arrest of political opponents following the abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir, and the use of sedition laws to persecute political opponents have resulted in the U.S. human rights group Freedom House stripping India of its ‘Free’ status in its yearly global survey.

Where will all this end?

Predicting the future is the easiest way to make a fool of oneself.  All I know is if India continues to move in the same direction as it has been over the past decade, then the ending will not be pretty.