Fall in India’s democracy ranking: US rights body
NEW DELHI: A US-based human rights watchdog said on Wednesday that India registered the steepest decline in its rankings of the world’s 25 largest democracies because of the scrapping of Kashmir’s special status, the implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam and the controversial new citizenship law.
Freedom House, the United States government-funded watchdog, said in its Freedom in the World 2020 report that the changes in Kashmir, the NRC and the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) had “shaken the rule of law in India and threatened the secular and inclusive nature of its political system”.
The annual report ranked 195 countries using 25 indicators covering seven areas – electoral processes, political processes and pluralism, functioning of governscore ment, freedom of expression and belief, rule of law, individual rights and association and organisational rights.
India, though included among “free” countries, dropped from a score of 75/100 in 2019 to 71/100 in 2020. In contrast, Pakistan and Bangladesh scored 38/100 and 39/100 and China, included among “not free” nations, scored 10/100. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ”discriminatory moves against the political rights of Muslims” during the year that followed the Bharatiya Janata Party’s general election victory contributed “to a four-point decline,” the report said.
There was no immediate response from Indian officials to the findings of the report.
Freedom House was scathing in its criticism of the situation in Kashmir, the National Register of Citizens and Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA).
These three actions, it said, led to India receiving the “largest decline among the world’s 25 largest democracies” in the annual report. It also criticised the government’s handling of protests on these matters.
“Tens of thousands of Indians from all religious backgrounds have taken to the streets to protest this jarring attack on their country’s character, but they have faced police violence in return, and it remains to be seen whether such demonstrations will persuade the government to change course,” the report said.
The changes in Kashmir had “abruptly stripped residents of basic political rights” and were accompanied by the “arbitrary arrests of hundreds of Kashmiri leaders and activists”.
The implementation of the National Register of Citizens in Assam “left nearly two million residents without citizenship in any country” and the “deeply flawed process was widely understood as an effort to exclude Muslims”, the report added.