QUOTE : Index: The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index9<br />Monitors: Civil liberties, pluralism, political culture and<br />participation, electoral process<br />Method: Global ranking<br />India 2014 ranking: 27<br />India 2020 ranking: 53<br />Result: India fell 26 places.<br />Reasons cited: Classifying India as a ‘flawed democracy’, the<br />report says ‘democratic norms have been under pressure since<br />2015. India’s score fell from a peak of 7.92 in 2014 to 6.61 in 2020’.<br />This was the ‘result of democratic backsliding under the leadership<br />of Narendra Modi’ and the ‘increasing influence of religion under<br />Modi, whose policies have fomented anti-Muslim feeling and<br />religious strife, has damaged the political fabric of the country’. Modi<br />had ‘introduced a religious element to the conceptualisation of Indian<br />citizenship, a step that many critics see as undermining the secular<br />basis of the Indian state’. In 2019, India was ranked 51st in the<br />Democracy Index, when the report said, ‘The primary cause of the<br />democratic regression was an erosion of civil liberties in the country.’<br />It fell two places again in 2020. ‘By contrast,’ The Economist<br />Intelligence Unit noted, ‘the scores for some of India’s regional<br />neighbours, such as Bangladesh, Bhutan and Pakistan, improved<br />marginally.