“India has a long history of elites misusing democratic institutions and violating democratic norms and values,” writes Vineeta Yadav, associate professor of political science at Penn State University, in an article published in The Journal of Democracy.

[Excerpts of article published on the Journal of Democracy website on July 2023]

[By Vineeta Yadav]

Since Narendra Modi and his Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) rose to power in 2014, alarm bells have been sounding. India, fear many observers, is abandoning liberal-democratic norms. BJP parliamentarians have been passing laws that discriminate against non-Hindu citizens, while the government has arrested opposition leaders and critics on specious grounds, and raided reputable media outlets and civil society organizations. Yet it must be remembered that, despite being the rare example of a stable democracy in a developing country, India has a long history of elites misusing democratic institutions and violating democratic norms and values. So how should we understand what is happening in India today—as the continuation of a highly imperfect democracy, or as a case of democratic backsliding?

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Elite Use of Democratic Institutions

To evaluate democratic changes in elite behavior toward democratic institutions, I look specifically at Indian elites’ design and use of Parliament, the courts, and election commissions as well as state agencies. The quality of parliamentary representation worsened significantly after 2013. There are several reasons for this. To begin with, a positive long-term trend of rising numbers of lower-caste MPs and cabinet members reversed in 2014, while the share of MPs with criminal charges against them (from all parties) increased from 24 percent in 2004 to 43 percent in 2019. Parliament also continued its long-term decline as an institution of policy deliberation, legislation, and executive oversight. The total number of parliamentary sittings has decreased steadily, from a high of 464 days during 1980–84 (the first post-Emergency five-year-term government) to 332 in 2004–2009, 357 in 2009–14, and, finally, just 328 days in 2014–19. The current post-2019 parliament is on its way to having the shortest term of any yet. Executive-oversight mechanisms such as short-notice questions and half-hour discussions have declined from 56 questions and 85 discussions during the 1980–84 Parliament to 5 and 14 in the 2004–2009, 0 and 7 in 2009–14, and 0 and 5 in 2014–19. Conversely, parliamentary time lost to MP protests and walkouts has soared, and the 2014 practice of passing bills without a quorum has continued. Parliamentary decline therefore pre-dates 2014.

The independence and powers of the courts, however, came under considerable threat after 2013. The Modi-led governments of 2014–19 and 2019–present have used tactics not seen since Indira Gandhi’s dominant-party regime in the 1970s. In 2014, for example, Modi’s government reintroduced a modified 99th Constitutional Amendment, which the previous Indian National Congress–led government had initiated a year earlier. The new version proposed to change the judicial-appointment process from a “collegium” system controlled largely by judges to a committee-based system that could allow the government to effectively veto any judicial appointment by nominating pliable “eminent individuals” to the committee. This bill passed both houses of Parliament and sixteen state legislatures with strong opposition support before receiving presidential assent on 31 December 2014. In October 2015, the Supreme Court declared the amendment unconstitutional and void. Given that it originated with and maintained support from the opposition, it is not the content of the amendment that distinguishes the BJP’s attitude toward the judiciary from that of its predecessors. Rather it is the BJP’s reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision ruling the bill unconstitutional.

Senior BJP leaders have been publicly attacking the judiciary ever since that ruling—challenging the Supreme Court’s and the judiciary’s legitimacy, the “basic structure” doctrine (which holds that Parliament does not have the power to alter the basic structure of the constitution, thereby protecting judicial independence), and the judiciary’s power to review legislation and executive actions for constitutionality. For example, in a January 2023 speech, Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankar, hand-picked by the BJP, thundered, “Can parliament allow that its verdict will be subject to any other authority? . . . The judiciary cannot intervene in law-making. Otherwise, it will be difficult to say that we are in a democratic nation.” Despite a massive backlog of legal cases, the government has repeatedly delayed appointing judges that the collegium has recommended. Such hostile rhetoric and actions raise serious concerns for the future of the judiciary in India.

India’s Election Commission, created by the constitution, is tasked with organizing and supervising all Indian elections. It is theoretically a nonpartisan body. Yet until a March 2023 Supreme Court ruling, the president, on the advice of the sitting government, appointed every election commissioner. As a result, more often than not, Election Commission rulings during elections favored incumbent governments and selectively punished rivals under both Congress and BJP governments. Additionally, the well-established practice of exploiting government control over civil-service positions to reward political supporters and punish opponents escalated significantly after 2013. Thus the government has increasingly used state agencies, including the tax department, intelligence services, and police, to harass and intimidate political rivals, critics, journalists and media organizations, academics, activists, and civil society organizations, and to reward BJP members and champions of the party’s Hindu-nationalist agenda.

Eroding Democratic Rights and Liberties

The second aspect of democratic backsliding is an elite-driven erosion of democratic norms, values, rights, and freedoms. Political parties shape political culture—inculcating not only political norms and values in elites and citizens, but also acceptable behaviors. I evaluate this dimension of backsliding by analyzing changes in elite-controlled civil liberties and the norms and values that the parties are instilling in elites and citizens. Although here I discuss only V-Dem measures, others are consistent with these trends. I assess changes in state actions regarding the freedoms of expression, assembly and association, religion, and freedom from political killings.

Collectively, the evidence strongly indicates that Indian democracy is backsliding. Now we must ask whether, given the varying quality of India’s democracy through the years, the BJP is to blame for India’s current democratic backsliding.

Who Is to Blame?

Could it be that the democratic backsliding we have seen in India since 2014 is simply the continuation of a longer process of gradual democratic decline rather than the outcome of the BJP’s intense attacks on democracy? To get at the heart of this question, I offer some suggestive evidence from a survey of political elites. In April–May 2019, I surveyed a sample of 165 politicians from the 1,404 party candidates running for national parliamentary office in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. These respondents represented the nine most-important political parties in those states: the major national parties—the BJP, Congress, the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of India–Marxist, Bahujan Samaj Party; and the relevant state parties—the Trinamool Congress, Telugu Desam Party, Samajwadi Party, and Yuvajana Shramika Rythu Congress Party. The response rate was 59 percent, and the socioeconomic, demographic, and political characteristics of the sample are comparable to the population of parliamentary candidates.

I asked respondents the following questions: On a scale of 1 (indicating not at all essential) to 5 (absolutely essential), how essential is it to democracy to have 1) free and fair elections, 2) strong opposition parties in Parliament, 3) a constitution based on Hindu beliefs and practices, and 4) gender equality in rights; and on a scale of 1 to 4, how desirable is it to have the executive or legislature supervise the courts, with 1 indicating full independence of the judiciary and 4 indicating full political supervision. These questions capture political support for important fundamental democratic rights and institutions. Therefore, if BJP and non-BJP politicians hold similar attitudes toward these democratic institutions and values, it would suggest that current backsliding may simply be the continuation of the country’s previous democratic decline. If, however, BJP politicians hold significantly less democratic attitudes than those of non-BJP politicians, then the combination of BJP politicians’ undemocratic preferences and their unbroken stint in office since 2014 would suggest that they are the main culprits in India’s current backsliding.

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Indian politicians therefore display relatively weak democratic values in general, but BJP politicians consistently demonstrate substantially less support for fundamental democratic institutions and freedoms than do politicians of all other parties. The BJP’s undemocratic values and attitudes, its actions, and its uninterrupted rule since 2014, strongly suggest that the BJP bears the brunt of responsibility for India’s current backsliding.

Can Indian Democracy Recover?

Many scholars point to how well Indian democracy recovered from the Emergency as a reason to be optimistic about democracy today. Yet there are a couple of crucial differences between the Emergency and what has transpired over the last decade that should raise concern. Indira Gandhi’s government suspended the constitution, thus giving it free rein to act undemocratically, but BJP politicians have trampled on democratic norms and values mostly without engaging in constitutional machinations and instead by normalizing egregious undemocratic behavior as part of everyday politics. Politicians from other parties—who, as the survey showed, also have undemocratic attitudes—have probably learned many lessons about effective undemocratic tactics from the BJP. Thus voting out the BJP would not necessarily bring an end to backsliding.

The BJP currently has no viable challenger at the national level, although it does face fierce competition in individual states. The Congress party has long been in decline, the Aam Aadmi Party is in its infancy as a national party, and other parties stand no real chance nationally. This lack of credible competition for national office, combined with the BJP’s formidable electoral and party machine, mean that the party is likely to remain in power at the national level without meaningful checks for the foreseeable future.

Finally, the suspension of democracy during the Emergency was largely driven by elites—imposed on the people by the government. When elections returned in 1977, Indian citizens voted Indira Gandhi out—a sign that her government had failed to convince them that its undemocratic actions had been legitimate. In contrast, the BJP, since coming to national power in 2014, has radically altered the norms, values, and behaviors of the people and legitimized in their eyes undemocratic government actions taken “in defense” of the nation and “Indian” identity. What constitutes acceptable political culture among elites and citizens has become more coarse, more violent, and less democratic. Given how long it takes for political culture to change, the normalization of undemocratic attitudes and actions among Indian voters is perhaps the most reliable guarantor of continued backsliding in India: The political leaders of the future will rise from their ranks and they will select future governments. Democratic backsliding therefore seems to be India’s future for now.

[Vineeta Yadav is associate professor of political science at Penn State University. Her most recent book is Religious Parties and the Politics of Civil Liberties (2021), winner of the 2022 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research.]