It's not only India: Polish democracy faces the same false charges, writes Salvatore Babones

When Western media outlets publish editorials about the supposed decline of democracy in the world, India inevitably takes centre stage. India’s low rankings on global democracy indices result from a combination of Western intellectual chauvinism abroad and establishment intellectual resentment at home. When the intellectual class is angry and united, no survey of intellectuals is going to look good for a government they despise. It’s no surprise that both global and local intellectuals despise the BJP. The party’s mix of populist politics and religious conservatism is an anathema to them, and the phenomenon of an outsider party maintaining itself in power by winning a plurality of votes against a fractured opposition is tantalisingly frustrating. But India’s experience of declining democracy rankings under the BJP is not unique. It closely mirrors the experience of one other country, a country that is culturally and historically very different from India, but politically very similar. That country is Poland. Poland does not at first glance seem like a likely comparison case for India. But in each country, the governing party represents an outsider political class that has deep roots in its society’s particular religious, territorial, and civilizational traditions. Poland’s Law and Justice Party (known by its Polish acronym: PiS) repeatedly wins elections over the staunch opposition of the country’s political, economic, and intellectual elite by delivering on pro-poor, pro-family policies that benefit the majority of voters. Like India’s BJP, it relies disproportionately on the votes of the less educated and the poor, despite being portrayed by its opponents as a party of “right-wing” conservative businesspeople. In Poland as in India, the outsider party has nonetheless remained at the head of government for two consecutive terms, with every expectation of winning a third. In both countries, the 2019 election platform of the main opposition party was devoid of positive policy proposals, focusing instead on vilifying the party currently in government. And in both countries, the opposition dreams of winning the next election through the formation of a “grand coalition” of disparate parties with competing agendas. Like the BJP, the PiS turns for ideological support to a newly emerging “national” intelligentsia, in contrast to the country’s long-established international intellectuals. The national intelligentsia is that portion of a country’s intellectual class that tends to read, write, and argue in the national language, drawing lessons from their country’s particular national historical experiences. But the international intellectuals overwhelmingly shape international understandings of their native countries. To the extent that people in the outside world know anything at all about the politics of a country like Poland or India, they know it through the accounts of their internationalised intellectuals. As a result, the PiS and the BJP share one more thing in common: Both are routinely vilified in the international press. Search “democracy in danger” and four cases come up again and again: The United States (of course), Hungary (deservedly so), Poland, and India. India at least stands a chance of righting the record. Anyone outsider who cares can follow Indian politics by reading the English-language press, and many politically-active Indians can write and speak fluently in English. India faces serious structural challenges to getting its message out, but at least language isn’t one of them. Poland’s situation is very different. Virtually no one outside Poland studies Polish as a foreign language. International views on Poland, its political cleavages, and the PiS are based almost entirely on insights provided by Poland’s own international intellectuals. There is no alternative point of view. Even worse, when the European Union has a dispute with Poland, the Western media treats the EU as the trusted party, almost by default: Brussels Eurocrats are closely tied into Western intellectual networks, while their Polish counterparts are not. This is ironic, considering that the European Union is not generally well-respected in the Anglosphere. When it’s a case of Brussels versus Washington, London, or Silicon Valley, the Western media does not necessarily take the EU’s word at face value. But when it’s a case of Brussels versus Warsaw, it does. The “democracy in danger” label has been attached to both Poland and India despite the lack of any meaningful evidence to suggest that it is true. Neither the PiS nor the BJP has silenced hostile media voices, restructured their countries’ universities, or made major changes to their countries’ electoral systems to entrench themselves in power. Instead, the PiS and the BJP have won by delivering on their electoral promises—in other words, by doing what any government is supposed to do. A common criticism of both parties is that they have taken credit for efficiently implementing policies that had been enacted years before by other governments. An objective observer might respond: Yes, exactly. Reading the international criticisms of Polish and Indian democracy, it seems obvious that many of them would disappear overnight if Poland’s Civic Platform or India’s Congress Party won a national poll and returned to government. If that appraisal is correct, then it’s not Polish or Indian democracy that the international activists don’t respect; it’s the Polish and Indian people. The author is an associate professor at the University of Sydney and the executive director of the Indian Century Roundtable. He earned his MS (mathematical sciences) and PhD (sociology) from the Johns Hopkins University. Views expressed are personal. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.