India was downgraded to “partly free” for the first time since 1997 in an annual ranking of democracies by the US government-funded research group Freedom House. The report cited worsening civil rights, continuing discrimination against Muslim citizens and increased harassment of government critics under PM Narendra Modi for the slip in rankings.
The report titled “Freedom in the World 2021—Democracy under Siege”, released by the Washington-based organization, downgraded India’s status from a ‘free’ country to a ‘partly free’ country, giving it a ‘global freedom score’ of 67/100 – down from a score of 71 in 2019 and 75 in 2018—after judging it on the basis of various political rights and civil liberties.
India “appears to have abandoned its potential to serve as a global democratic leader”, said the report, adding that India’s fall “from the upper ranks of free nations could have a particularly damaging impact on global democratic standards”.
The report, however, left several Indians enraged. Many of them were angry over the biased nature of the report and the fact that it did not consider J&K and Ladakh to be a part of India.
The report, citing “key developments” in 2020 that contributed to the ‘downgrading’ of India, mentioned that in February 2020, more than 50 people, mostly Muslims were killed in the communal violence that followed the protests related to Citizenship Amendment Act.
According to critics, the report failed to mention that the CAA didn’t aim to change the citizenship rights of Indian citizens, and was meant to help persecuted minorities from neighbouring Islamic nations to get Indian citizenship without hassle.