{"id":96221,"date":"2021-03-19T11:05:20","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T05:35:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=96221"},"modified":"2021-03-19T11:51:03","modified_gmt":"2021-03-19T06:21:03","slug":"ways-to-strengthen-indias-democracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/ways-to-strengthen-indias-democracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Ways to Strengthen India\u2019s Democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>\u00a0Synopsis<\/strong>: Increasing attacks on the press and the erosion of judicial autonomy are threatening India\u2019s global image as an Indian\u2019s\u00a0Democracy. The government needs to take steps to strengthen India&#8217;s democratic values,<\/p>\n<p><strong>Background<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It has been said that Democracy is on retreat worldwide.\u00a0Many democracies in the 21<sup>st<\/sup> century continue to disregard the principles of democracies.<\/li>\n<li>Principles such as the <strong>freedom of the press,<\/strong> <strong>independence of the other public institutions<\/strong> of <strong>the state<\/strong> are often violated.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>For instance,<\/strong> many world leaders such as Vladimir Putin (Russia), Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan (Turkey), Trump (USA) had initiated a sustained, attack on these very institutions to sustain power.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Recently, the western academic institutions, the Freedom House (US) and the Varieties of Democracy project (Sweden) downgraded India\u2019s democratic ratings.<\/li>\n<li>However, India\u2019s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar dismissed these ratings as irrelevant.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Evolution of India\u2019s Democracy :<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The first-ever institutional check on sovereign power was provided through the <strong>Glorious Revolution<\/strong> in England. It led to the establishment of Parliament and England shifted from <strong>absolute monarchy to Constitutional monarchy<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>Later, the <b>French Revolution<\/b>\u00a0and the <strong>American revolution<\/strong> assured inalienable rights to its citizens.<\/li>\n<li>However, in the era of colonialism, exclusion of women, as well as racial and religious minorities continued till the 1950s.<\/li>\n<li>After the 1950s, democracy got strengthened due to the following measures.\n<ul>\n<li style=\"list-style-type: none;\">\n<ul>\n<li>Institutionalization of <strong>universal suffrage elections <\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Constitutional check on the powers of the government<\/li>\n<li><strong>Independent judiciary empowered with judicial review<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Empowered press to scrutinize government actions<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Finally, <\/strong>after the end of the <b>Cold War<\/b>, due to the collapse of the <strong>Soviet Union,<\/strong> many authoritarian countries were forced to conduct elections. This led to the establishment of liberal democracy rule in most of the world&#8217;s countries.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Why India\u2019s democratic ratings were downgraded?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Both Freedom House and V-Dem multi-dimensional framework give considerable weightage to the <strong>freedom of the press<\/strong> and the <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/the-independence-of-the-judiciary-and-fundamental-right-to-free-speech-and-expression-are-of-great-value-and-both-are-required-to-be-balanced-examine-the-statement-in-the-context-of-recent-case-in-su\/\">independence of the judiciary<\/a>.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Concerns about the undermining of these institutional checks-and-balances led both institutions to reduce India\u2019s score on their index.<\/li>\n<li>Weakening democracy in India can negatively impact India\u2019s ambitions to become a full-fledged member of the Quad or the D-10. It will also undermine India\u2019s claim to become a Permanent Member of the <strong>UN security council.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>What needs to be done?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>First, the <\/strong>Government should hear criticism rather than rejecting it outrightly. Suggestions on eroding democratic values need a thoughtful, and respectful response.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Second, <\/strong>the press and the judiciary which are considered the pillars of India\u2019s Democracy, require to be independent of any executive interference.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Third, <\/strong>strong democracy requires strong opposition. Without an alternative choice, the very objective of election to provide a check on arbitrary power gets defeated.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Democratic Values and Principles are core to India\u2019s identity. We need to safeguard India\u2019s Democracy by strengthening its pillars- <strong>the Legislature, Executive, Judiciary, and the Media<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/epaper.thehindu.com\/Home\/ShareArticle?OrgId=G2U8CSU41.1&amp;imageview=0\">The Hindu<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0Synopsis: Increasing attacks on the press and the erosion of judicial autonomy are threatening India\u2019s global image as an Indian\u2019s\u00a0Democracy. The government needs to take steps to strengthen India&#8217;s democratic values, Background It has been said that Democracy is on retreat worldwide.\u00a0Many democracies in the 21st century continue to disregard the principles of democracies. Principles&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/ways-to-strengthen-indias-democracy\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Ways to Strengthen India\u2019s Democracy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10316,"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":[1676,1295],"class_list":["post-96221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-misc_0","tag-po_1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":36,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1699083745},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96221","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\/10316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}