STUDY SAYS INDIA A ‘BRIGHT SPOT’ FOR DEMOCRACY

LONDON : A new University of Cambridge report covering 154 countries over several decades finds that 2019 had the ‘the highest level of democratic discontent’ since 1995, but India and South Asia are among ‘bright spots’, where satisfaction with democratic governance is high.

The report says dissatisfaction with democratic politics among citizens of developed countries has increased from a third to half of all individuals over the last 25 years. The report is based on the largest international dataset on global attitudes to democracy ever made. It combines over 25 international survey projects covering 154 countries between 1995 and 2020 and includes new cross-country surveys from polling firm YouGov.

“Pakistan, Bangladesh, and India…each have a long experience with electoral institutions, which in the latter case has been unbroken barring two years of emergency rule in the 1970s. Satisfaction with democracy is also comparatively high across the region today”, the report says.

However, the report qualifies the satisfaction levels in India with less availability of data: “(Though) majorities in India have consistently expressed satisfaction with the country’s institutions, the data is sparse and there have been fluctuations over time. On two occasions – in 2013, a year before the election of...Narendra Modi, and several years later, following a botched currency reform – dissatisfaction spiked at close to half of all respondents”.