By SAT News Desk
MELBOURNE, 6 March 2021: America’s leading think tank, Freedom House, in a recent world report said India has become from a ‘Free’ country to a ‘Partly Free’ country. It categorizes countries as ‘Free’, ‘Partly Free’, and ‘Not Free’. In fact, India now rubs shoulders with almost all South Asian countries (Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Nepal) as ‘Partly Free’. Afghanistan is ‘Not Free’, the report says. India has rejected the new categorization in 7 point-by-point rebuttals. (See below link)
Its media release on March 3 says, ” The report found that the share of countries designated Not Free has reached its highest level since the deterioration of democracy began in 2006 and that countries with declines in political rights and civil liberties outnumbered those with gains by the largest margin recorded during the 15-year period. The report downgraded the freedom scores of 73 countries, representing 75 percent of the global population. Those affected include not just authoritarian states like China, Belarus, and Venezuela, but also troubled democracies like the United States and India.
In one of the year’s most significant developments, India’s status changed from Free to Partly Free, meaning less than 20 percent of the world’s people now live in a Free country—the smallest proportion since 1995. Indians’ political rights and civil liberties have been eroding since Narendra Modi became prime minister in 2014. His Hindu nationalist government has presided over increased pressure on human rights organizations, rising intimidation of academics and journalists, and a spate of bigoted attacks—including lynchings—aimed at Muslims. The decline deepened following Modi’s reelection in 2019, and the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 featured further abuses of fundamental rights.
The changes in India formed part of a broader shift in the international balance between democracy and authoritarianism, with authoritarians generally enjoying impunity for their abuses and seizing new opportunities to consolidate power or crush dissent. In many cases, promising democratic movements faced major setbacks as a result.”
READ FREEDOM HOUSE PRESS RELEASE HERE
This has perturbed the Indian government into saying the Freedom House classification is “misleading, incorrect and misplaced”. An MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava quoted in a wire. in report said, “The political judgments of Freedom House are as inaccurate and distorted as their maps. For example on the COVID-19 situation, there is a widespread appreciation in the world of our response, of our high recovery rate, and of our low fatality rate. India has robust institutions and well-established democratic practices. We do not need sermons especially from those who cannot get their basics right.”
