According to Al Jazeera on Thursday, the government of Narendra Modi has contacted a significant think tank in India to create an indigenous democracy ratings index. This measure could aid the government in countering recent downgrades in rankings from foreign organizations that New Delhi worries might have an impact on the nation’s credit rating.
Two persons intimately involved in the project discussions said that the ratings system is being prepared by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), which collaborates closely with the Indian government on several projects.
The report states that the index is anticipated to follow New Delhi’s storyline more closely than the Western-based rankings that Modi’s team has criticized.
A senior government source stated, asking anonymity, “ORF will be releasing Democracy Rankings in a few weeks. A review meeting was held by NITI Aayog in January.”
According to the official, the new rankings system might be unveiled shortly. However, it’s unclear when, including whether the index would be released prior to India’s forthcoming national elections, which were declared last Saturday. Beginning on April 19, India will hold seven phases of voting, culminating vote tallying on June 4. Modi is a heavy favorite to win a third term in office.
The index is anticipated to reflect the story of New Delhi more closely than rankings derived from the West.
“The Democracy Index being prepared by ORF went through a peer review process and expert analysis on the methodology a few weeks ago,” an individual familiar with the development told Al Jazeera. It will probably be available shortly.
In response to questions from Al Jazeera, ORF, which co-hosts the Raisina Dialogue with the nation’s Ministry of External Affairs and is India’s version of the Munich Security Conference and the Shangri-La Dialogue, among other important geopolitical and geoeconomic gatherings, did not react.
This year, the Raisina Dialogue took place from February 21 to February 23. The government-owned think tank NITI Aayog, which has been guiding internal talks about global rankings within the Modi administration, stated that it was not creating the index but did neither confirm or deny that it had assisted an outside think tank in creating one. “NITI is not creating a Democracy Index,” an official from the organization said Al Jazeera.
“To promote reforms and growth in the nation, the Indian government keeps an eye on a few global indices that are tracked by different international entities.” However, emails and meeting minutes between government departments over the previous three years that Al Jazeera was able to collect and examine indicate that the Modi administration is becoming increasingly focused on rebutting attacks on India’s democratic credentials, including one that was made through an Indian report.
This initiative started immediately following India’s relegation from a free democracy to a “partially free democracy” in 2021 by foreign indices including the US-based nonprofit Freedom House. Based in Sweden, the V-Dem Institute categorized India as a “electoral autocracy”.
