India mulling democracy report, freedom index to be brought by local think-tank

New Delhi, Mar 17: India is mulling a world democracy report and a global press freedom index to be brought out by an independent think-tank. These discussions were on before Freedom House and V-Dem Institute downgraded India's democratic rankings, a report in the Hindustan Times said.

It may be recalled that the Ministry of External Affairs had earlier said that it may encourage on of the Indian independent think-tanks to bring out its own annual world democracy report based on comprehensive parameters as well as an annual global freedom of press index. The matter is still being considered and no decision has been taken as yet.

The discussions on the same began after the Prime Minister's Office forwarded a letter written by former Prasar Bharti chairman, Surya Prakash suggesting that India should counter reports such as the one from V-Dem Institute and Press Freedom Index by defining its own parameters on democracy.

The MEA in an internal note had suggested that missions across the world could actively engage with NGO/Institutes and provide them with material which will help them put India at the rightful place on press freedom index and democracy.

"Earlier this year, my attention was drawn to a World Press Freedom Index published by a French NGO with the acronym RSF. This report placed India at a lowly 142, while a number of nations which are theocracies and non-democracies, are way above us. More recently, I saw a report published by a Swedish Institute called V-Dem. This institute places India at number 90 among democracies. Here again, a large number of nations where there is no separation of powers between the state and religion, which do not have a republican form of government, and where the concept of equality before law does not exist, are way ahead of us. In fact, many countries in the top ten nations have different forms of Christianity as their state religion, whereas the secular ideal is embedded in the preamble of our Constitution," Surya Prakash had written to the PMO last year.

Last week, External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar had slammed the two reports and called out the outlets for their hypocrisy and acting like self-appointed custodians of the world, who find it difficult that someone in India is not looking for their approval.