India’s Authoritarian Slide

On March 20, India’s Election Commission announced the schedule for the country’s 18th general election, with voting from April 19 to June 1. With some 968 million eligible voters – 150 million more than the 2019 general elections – the upcoming polls will be the largest the world has ever seen. They will also be the most expensive, with an estimated price tag of $14.4 billion.

Colorful and noisy, Indian elections are often described as a celebration, even a “festival of democracy.” However, India’s democracy is in poor health and declining rapidly. 

Democratic institutions have been systematically undermined over the decades, especially since the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014. India is increasingly being described not just as a “flawed democracy” but as an autocracy. 

Indeed, the Sweden-based V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute, which has characterized India as an “electoral autocracy” since 2018, described it as one of “the worst autocratizers” in the world in the 2024 report. V-Dem ranks India at 104th out of 179 countries in its Liberal Democracy Index, down from 93rd last year.

“Over the years, India’s autocratization process has been well documented, including gradual but substantial deterioration of freedom of expression, compromising independence of the media, crackdowns on social media, harassments of journalists critical of the government, as well as attacks on civil society and intimidation of the opposition,” the 2024 V-Dem report said, drawing attention to the BJP government’s use of “laws on sedition, defamation, and counterterrorism to silence critics.”

Just as worrying as the erosion of India’s democratic institutions and freedoms, and the government’s mounting assaults on democratic rights, is the large public support for autocratic forms of governance.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2023 that was published in February 2024 studied public perspectives on various political systems, including representative democracy, autocracy, technocracy, and military rule. It found that 67 percent of Indian respondents supported autocracy, and 72 percent would support military rule. In a similar survey conducted in 2017, 55 percent of the Indian respondents backed “a governing system in which a strong leader can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts,” while 53 percent supported military rule.

When asked whether they saw representative democracy as a good approach, 36 percent of Indians replied in the affirmative in 2023, down from 44 percent who held that view in 2017. 

India is often described as the world’s largest democracy, given the sheer size of its electorate. Yet the recent Pew survey found that of the 24 countries surveyed, India had the largest share of respondents who support autocracy. It also had the third lowest share of people who consider the freedom of opposition parties to be crucial. 

Neither the democratic slide nor the rising support for autocratic forms of governance is new to India. The colonial government had an array of coercive laws to maintain order and repress subject populations. Independent India’s constitution retained many of these repressive laws and added some of its own over the decades. 

Indeed, for 21 months between 1975 and 1977, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi imposed an internal emergency on the country. Fundamental rights were suspended and opposition leaders and critics were jailed. 

However, Gandhi called for elections in March 1977, which were free and fair and resulted in the defeat not only of the Congress party but of Gandhi herself. The Janata Party government that followed collapsed quickly, and in January 1980, Gandhi swept again into power on the back of voter weariness with the squabbling, instability, and lawlessness that marked Janata Party rule.

Indian voters had forgiven her authoritarian rule. 

Since 1989, India has been ruled by multi-party coalitions. Public perception of these governments has not been positive as they have been seen as weak, with leaders having to give in to pressure from allies. The perception of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a “weak” leader who was unable to act against corrupt allies paved the way for the Hindu right-wing BJP’s victory in the 2014 general election. 

In 2019, the BJP secured an even more emphatic win. Although it leads a coalition, the Narendra Modi government does not need the support of allies, as it has a massive majority in Parliament on its own. 

Modi is perceived by people as a muscular and strong leader, one who is not afraid to act. Many Indians see him as someone who has acted on several issues that had dragged on for decades. Although his decision to demonetize the 500 and 1,000 rupee currency notes in 2016 impoverished many, it did not lead to mass protests as it was seen as a long-overdue action against the shadow economy. The Balakot strikes of 2019 reaffirmed Modi’s image in the eyes of his supporters as a strongman who could put Pakistan in its place. 

Like Gandhi, Modi is an autocratic ruler. But there are important differences. Unlike Modi, who draws on the organizational support of the ideologically motivated foot soldiers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other Hindutva outfits, Gandhi had only the support of a declining and faction-ridden Congress party. And although she did impose the Emergency and engaged in communal politics, she was essentially a secular democrat who believed in a plural and inclusive India.

This is not the case with Modi, who is steeped in the fascist ideology of the RSS. Modi may not have declared an internal Emergency yet, but his authoritarian rule is far more dangerous. A populist leader, he has successfully stirred and fueled public insecurities with his anti-Muslim hate speeches and demagoguery, and followed this up with violent action against minorities and critics. 

Electoral autocrats like Modi are more dangerous than military coup leaders as they can claim far more legitimacy, having come to power through elections. They flaunt their democratic credentials by pointing to the people’s mandate, even as they choke democratic institutions and processes and pulverize the opposition.

What makes the large and growing support of Indians for authoritarian forms of governance worrying is that an authoritarian ruler can stamp out dissent and democracy in India without fear of being challenged by mass protests.