{"id":229644,"date":"2023-03-03T19:43:53","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T14:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=229644"},"modified":"2023-03-03T19:43:53","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T14:13:53","slug":"no-method-in-the-madness-a-new-critique-of-the-v-dem-democracy-rankings-highlights-where-the-problem-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/no-method-in-the-madness-a-new-critique-of-the-v-dem-democracy-rankings-highlights-where-the-problem-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"No method in the madness \u2013 A new critique of the V-Dem democracy rankings highlights where the problem lies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source<\/strong>: The post is based on an article\u00a0\u201c<\/strong>No method in the madness \u2013 A new critique of the V-Dem democracy rankings highlights where the problem lies<\/strong>\u201d published in Business Standard<\/strong> on\u00a01st<\/sup> March 2023<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Syllabus: GS 2 \u2013 Governance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Relevance: <\/strong>I<\/strong>ssues associated with ranking of India in V-Dem Report.<\/p>\n

News<\/strong>: Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) releases Democracy Report every year. It has consistently degraded India\u2019s ranking for the past few years in its report.<\/p>\n

What are the reasons behind downgrading the rank of India by V-Dem?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

India was ranked 93 out of 140 countries in the Democracy Report, 2022.<\/p>\n

V-Dem rankings are based on five sub-indices, namely, 1)<\/strong> elected officials, 2)<\/strong> universal suffrage, 3)<\/strong> clean elections, 4)<\/strong> freedom of association, and 5)<\/strong> freedom of expression.<\/p>\n

The first two criteria (elected officials and universal suffrage<\/strong>) are scored on the basis of an analysis of the constitutions<\/strong> of the countries being ranked. Hence, if the constitution of a country claims it \u201celects\u201d its officials, it gets a perfect score.<\/p>\n

India falls short of a perfect score because till 2021 two Lok Sabha MPs were \u201cselected\u201d<\/strong> (two representatives of the Anglo-Indian community) and not elected<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

However, this law was repealed in 2021, but still becomes the reason for V-Dem to give India a less than perfect score under this head in 2022.<\/p>\n

The remaining three parameters (clean elections, freedom of association, and freedom of expression<\/strong>) are ranked purely with the help of scientific experts.<\/p>\n

Political science experts<\/strong> judge a democracy on their own parameters. Therefore, there may be variations about a knowledgeable expert\u2019s views on Indian democracy.<\/p>\n

It may be subject to individual political, ideological or personal biases.\u00a0For example,<\/strong> India’s rating on clean elections has fallen from 3.6 to 2.3 since 2014 despite free and fair elections conducted by the Election Commission.<\/p>\n

This shows that there are flaws with the choices of indicators, unexplainable decisions, and vulnerability to expert biases in the V-Dem Report.<\/p>\n

What measures can be taken by India to improve its ranking?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

First,<\/strong> it should engage with V-Dem to modify its methodology so that it is truly reflective of trends in Indian democracy.<\/p>\n

Second,<\/strong> it must evolve its own standards on how democracy must be ranked in a diverse and multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual and pluralistic society like India.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The post is based on an article\u00a0\u201cNo method in the madness \u2013 A new critique of the V-Dem democracy rankings highlights where the problem lies\u201d published in Business Standard on\u00a01st March 2023. Syllabus: GS 2 \u2013 Governance Relevance: Issues associated with ranking of India in V-Dem Report. News: Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) releases Democracy… Continue reading No method in the madness \u2013 A new critique of the V-Dem democracy rankings highlights where the problem lies<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[10503,212],"class_list":["post-229644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-business-standard","tag-gs-paper-2","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}