Democratic backsliding amid the covid-19 pandemic in India

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led many analysts to worry about the fate of global democracy, as governments the world over centralised power and enacted emergency legislation. In India, the world’s largest democracy, this prediction has turned out to be accurate. However, this article will argue that the pandemic was a mere accelerator of existing trends there. The erosion of democratic institutions in India since the advent of the BJP-led government in 2014 has been so severe that it is no longer possible to classify India as a full democracy. In fact, as this article will show, the very core of India’s democracy, the electoral process, has been corroded so that it is very questionable whether Indian elections are still free and fair. Keywords: Europe in the World