Will the recent elections halt India’s democratic backsliding? Or, are the results simply a temporary democratic breather, and the older trends will return before long? Over the last 10 years, India has come to be known as a democratic backslider. It was not the only such polity. Others included Turkey, Hungary, Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro and the United States under Donald Trump. But given India’s size, it was clear that if India could halt its democratic erosion, it would be a great boost for democracy worldwide. Can India do so?
Before we answer this question, we first need to analyse what the concept of democratic backsliding entails. It does not imply democratic collapse, only democratic attrition, or a grinding down process. It is not to be viewed in binary terms, meaning democracy (1) or dictatorship (0). It is conceptualised on a scale, 0 to 1, meaning the closer a polity is to 1, the more democratic it is, and the closer it is to zero, the more authoritarian it will be.
Second, while recognising that there cannot be a democracy without elections, the concept also says that democracy has two dimensions: Electoral and non-electoral. The first applies to how free and fair the elections are, and the second to how democratic the polity is in the years that fall between elections.
But how is democracy to be measured between elections? Most of all, it covers freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom of religious practice and minority rights. The first deals with matters such as whether citizens are free to speak, whether the press is unconstrained, whether the universities have the liberty to teach and do research freely, etc. The second is essentially a point about civil society. Are citizens free to form non-state organisations? The third and fourth criteria merge in India, for India’s predominant minorities are religious, not racial as in the US.
Third, democratic backsliding also means that, unlike in the 1960s and 1970s when military coups used to disrupt democracies, elected civilian politicians can now cause erosion. Often, such undermining is only about the period between elections, while elections are freer. But sometimes, to reduce electoral competition, elected leaders also start manipulating elections, even jailing opposition politicians. That is when backsliding begins to turn a democracy, however weak, into an “electoral autocracy”, as Putin’s Russia is.
How is this summary of modern democratic theory applicable to India? Until this past election, India under Modi was viewed as having a vibrant electoral democracy, but its non-electoral freedoms were rapidly going down. Dissenting voices were declining in the press, the universities, the arts and among the citizenry. Minority rights were threatened as Hindu nationalism targeted Muslims via rhetoric and violence. Many non-governmental organisations, if they were regime-critical, ceased to function. Many more lost their permission to raise overseas funds.
Earlier this year, unlike in 2014 or 2019, doubts also started emerging about how free the elections were going to be, as some Opposition chief ministers were jailed and an attempt was made to freeze the bank accounts of the largest Opposition party. Weaponising corruption, the incumbent tried to curb electoral competitiveness. But in the end, the attempt failed. The BJP lost its majority, and was able to form a government only in an alliance. The climate of fear curbed how freely the people spoke but, with isolated exceptions, it did not prevent them from voting.
How, then, will the election results influence the next few years? Let us take each non-electoral democratic feature by turn. Freedom of expression has never had a huge political base in India. All political parties have undermined it at some point or the other. India’s First Constitutional Amendment also puts some legal constraints on free speech, which many governments have exploited to silence critics. It is the scale of the attack that distinguishes the Modi era, not an attack on citizen freedoms per se. Given this history, a principled commitment to free speech would not suddenly acquire salience. But a pragmatic recognition of a well-known paradox might trigger a pruning of assaults on dissent. As research on authoritarianism shows, instead of helping incumbents by silencing critics and limiting their campaigns, a climate of fear can actually hurt. Intelligence agencies often end up telling the government what it wants to hear. Modi perhaps thought “char sau paar” was an easy target, but it generated serious Dalit and OBC worries about constitutional revisions and affirmative action that could not be picked up in time. This is also perhaps why all exit polls were unanimous about a Modi victory. Voters were afraid of telling pollsters that they voted against the BJP/NDA. Social science theory calls this “preference falsification”.
Though constitutionally protected, civil society freedoms also don’t have a broad political base in India. Exceptions aside, political parties watch NGOs and their reach with considerable ambivalence. The resurgence of civil society will depend heavily on judicial support. Historically, courts are stronger when executives are weaker. The judiciary, if approached, may now feel freer to reverse attacks on non-governmental institutions.
Minority rights are more likely to be a clear beneficiary of these elections. The two biggest alliance partners, TDP and JDU, substantially depend on an OBC-Muslim voter base. TDP is even committed to reservations for Muslims. For these parties, Delhi is important because it can promote their state interests. The ghuspaithiye (infiltrators) logic, if used again by Delhi, will only make JDU and TDP electorally weaker in their states. One should, therefore, expect declining enthusiasm in Delhi for a uniform civil code, a return to the National Registry of Citizens (NRC), and a ban on inter-faith marriages (something quite conceivable if the BJP had won 370 seats). Lynchings or bulldozers may not substantially decline, for they are a state-level phenomenon.
PM Modi has always equated democracy with elections. He read the 2019 electoral victory as giving him the mandate to impair the non-electoral aspects of democracy and impose his undeterred will. With a loss of 63 seats in 2024, compared to 2019, and a shortfall of 130 seats, compared to the 2024 target, the BJP may have to scale its majoritarian project down. One should not expect a full erasure of the party’s impulses and instincts.
The writer is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University, where he also directs the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute
