Liberal Democracy Index

The Liberal Democracy Index is a weighted average of 5 sub-indexes. The scores in each year's index are based on the observations made in the preceding year.

• India is currently classified as an "Electoral Autocracy" based on its performance on the Index
• India's rank improved by 4 places, and it is placed at the 93rd position amongst 179 countries on the Index
• India's overall performance level in Liberal Democracy is at 35% in 2021, a marginal rise from the level of 32% in 2020.
• As quoted in the Liberal Democracy Index report in Mar 2021, "The world’s largest democracy has turned into an electoral autocracy. Most of the decline occurred following BJP’s victory in India's 2014 elections and their promotion of a Hindu-nationalist agenda." It further states, "Autocratization typically follows a pattern. First, seek to restrict and control the media while curbing academia and civil society. Then couple these with disrespect for political opponents to feed polarization while using the machinery of the government to spread disinformation. Only when you have come far enough on these fronts is it time for an attack on democracy’s core: elections and other formal institutions."

• In comparison to its benchmarked G20 peers, India's overall performance score is amongst the lowest with only Turkey, Russia and China below it on the Index in 2021.
• India's overall performance in Liberal Democracy is lower than the current world average of 39%.

The Electoral Democracy Index is one of the five sub-indexes of the Liberal Democracy Index. It reflects a relatively ambitious idea of electoral democracy and captures not only the extent to which regimes hold clean, free and fair elections, but also their actual freedom of expression, alternative sources of information and association, as well as male and female suffrage and the degree to which government policy is vested in elected political officials.

The electoral principle of democracy seeks to embody the core value of making rulers responsive to citizens, achieved through electoral competition for the electorate's approval under circumstances when suffrage is extensive; political and civil society organizations can operate freely; elections are clean and not marred by fraud or systematic irregularities; and elections affect the composition of the chief executive of the country.