- This piece was originally published by The Plank.
In March 2021, India’s external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, openly dismissed global democracy rankings, arguing that they were not a neutral measure of governance but political tools wielded against countries that refused to follow Western-defined standards.
“You have a set of self-appointed custodians of the world, who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval,” Jaishankar told an Indian news network. “They invent their rules, their parameters, pass their judgements, and then make out as though this is some kind of global exercise.”
His comments were a direct response to India’s democratic downgrade by international agencies. Days earlier, Freedom House, a US-based watchdog monitoring global democratic rights, had stripped India of its “free” status for the first time since the Emergency Era, which saw elections suspended and civil rights curbed between 1955 and 1977.
