Democracy And Rule Of Law In India: Why Do We Need To Pay Attention?
Democracy And Rule
Of Law In India: Why Do We Need To Pay Attention?
- Sayan Basak
Amidst
the controversies and excitement over “Padmaavat” and “Padman”, we should not
fail to take notice of the two recently-released ‘Indexes’ and what they had to
say about India and its state of affairs. The first index is the Rule of
Law Index 2017-18 by the World Justice Project (WJP) and the other one
is the Democracy Index 2017 released by the Economist Intelligence
Unit (EIU) of the well-known Economist Group.
We
should pay attention to these indexes for reasons which I am mentioning here:
As the WJP report itself clarifies – the concern for the Rule of Law should not
be limited only to the lawyers, judges or parliamentarians but to all citizens
as it affects all citizens. The Rule of Law guarantees safety and wellbeing of
the citizens by ensuring that the citizens are not detained arbitrarily, and
their fundamental, human rights are not violated.
Similarly,
it is important to look at the democracy index as the rule of law and democracy
are interlinked, and they can’t exist without each other. India has always been
very proud of being the world’s largest democracy, a pluralistic society where
people from different religions, castes and classes are living together. India
as a country has also managed to conduct large-scale elections and remain
democratically governed. Lately, there have been concerns expressed on the
health of democracy and the state of freedom of expression in the country.
On
this backdrop, looking at these two indexes becomes relevant and important. The
findings from the WJP’s Rule of Law Index and the EIU’s Democracy Index need to
be discussed in general and in the context of India – so that the countries can
be informed. This also enables the policymakers and civil society actors to
take steps to advocate and bring desired changes, reviving the rule of law and
strengthening the democracy of our country.
It
is important to note that the WJP Rule of Law index depends largely on primary
data that presents the state of rule of law in 113 countries with the help of
more than 110,000 household surveys and 3,000 expert surveys. Similarly, in its
tenth edition of the democracy index, the EIU’s report reviews how global
democracy fared in the year 2017 and depended largely on the data gathered from
the public-opinion surveys.
India’s
rank among 113 countries surveyed in the WJP Rule of Law index is 62 with a
score of 0.52. India has raised four positions from the previous Rule of Law
index of 2016. However, it does not give us a reason for cheer. In the South
Asian countries grouping, India stands third after Nepal and Sri Lanka. India’s
relatively smaller and poorer neighbours Nepal and Sri Lanka have performed
better than India and stand at the 58th and 59th places respectively
(globally). In the BRICS grouping too, India stands third with the score 0.52
ranking after South Africa (0.59) and Brazil (0.54).
The
World Justice Project arrived at this ranking by calculating scores and
rankings based on eight factors: constraints on government powers, the
absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security,
regulatory enforcement, civil justice, and criminal justice. Out of these eight
factors, there is an improvement in the factors such as order and security and
fundamental rights from 104 to 98, and from 81 to 75 respectively but in civil
justice factor, India’s rank has deteriorated to 97 from 81. At these ranking,
India still shows a worrisome trend standing lowly at 98, 97 and 75th ranks in
important factors such as order and security, civil justice and fundamental
rights.
Though
India has risen four places in the WJP Rule of Law index, it has fallen 10
places from 32 to 42 in EIU’s democracy index. It has placed India into
the category of ‘flawed democracy’. EIU’s democracy index uses five parameters
to assess the state of democracy: electoral process and pluralism, civil
liberties, the functioning of government, political participation and political
culture. India has fared poorly in the functioning of government (6.79/10) and
political culture (5.63/10). The report has noted that most prominently, India
has been affected by the rise of conservative religious ideologies and there is
a rise of vigilantism and violence against Muslims and dissenting voices.
These
survey findings call for introspection on the part of policymakers, civil
society actors and the general public in India. Today, nationalist ideologies
and authoritarian tendencies are on the rise globally. Even the (erstwhile) torchbearers
of democracy and liberalism are falling prey to it. It will be interesting to
see the global ranking of the United States of America in the rule of law index
stands at 19 just above Korea, and in the democracy index, it stands on the
26th place and categorized as a ‘flawed democracy’.
If India wants to be a global player in a true
sense, we cannot afford to walk the path of the other authoritarian regimes,
disrespecting the rule of law as it will result in further losing credibility
on the world stage. Especially, if India wants to play the role of
a responsible regional player in the south Asia region, the Indian
state must ensure that it is not backtracking in its ideals of democracy and
values of justice, liberty, equality enshrined in its constitution.
By
Sayan
Basak
Associate
Director, Research and publications-ProBono India
3rd
Year, Department of polymer Science and Technology,
University of Calcutta
References-
http://data.worldjusticeproject.org/
https://www.eiu.com/topic/democracy-index
https://infographics.economist.com/2017/DemocracyIndex/
https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/8OfnUjavrEFLlxybhdnOiK/Indias-rise-is-inevitable.html
