Sydney
All objective indicators show Indian democracy is in good health, in much better shape than those of peer countries with similar levels of education and income, a Sydney-based academic has said and noted that in several specific incidences, the data presented by international critics as evidence of the declining quality of Indian democracy shows signs of intentional deception.
In an article for The Australia Today, Salvatore Babones, an Associate Professor at the University of Sydney, has said that the world should be looking to India as a model, not of democratic backsliding, but of democratic success.
At 75 years old, it might reasonably be said that Indian democracy is healthier than ever, he said.
Babones, whose academic speciality includes international rankings, said that some recent international evaluations are suffused with wanton speculation, misleading statistics, and uncritical reproductions of activist accusations against the BJP-led government.
He said India seems to have uniquely solved the problem of how to run a liberal democracy in a relatively poor country.
It is often said that India is the world’s largest democracy. It is less well understood that India is by far the world’s poorest country to possess a well-institutionalised democratic system and to have maintained its democratic institutions throughout its entire history as an independent country, he said.
Many of the criticisms levelled at Indian democracy are actually criticisms of poverty, and Indian democracy should be admired for its persistence in the face of deprivation, not discounted for the shortcomings of the Indian economy.
