It's time India told the West: ‘Mind your own democracy’

When prejudiced opinion posts masquerade as journalism, it violates one of the four foundational pillars of democracy. As mainstream media is pivotal in shaping popular perceptions and helps the voter make informed choices in an election year, much of the Western observers’ anti-India blitzkrieg must be discounted by the discerning voter due to its inherent bias and colonial mindset.

A free, fair and thriving multi-party democracy is at work at the scale of 970 million, as Indians ready to exercise their franchise in the general elections. Stunningly ignoramus and half-informed foreign scribes that write for global media outlets, West’s India watchers, activists and NGOs are on overdrive to undermine the integrity of the Indian democratic process.

The woke brigade of journos who anoint themselves as upholders of liberal democracy are completely disconnected from the vox populi of the voting nation. Their feedback loops are through proxy, based on what they hear and perceive, and not by touring the expansive electoral terrain.

More from Opinion

Why Trump’s tariffs on India are a colossal mistake Apache induction and Aatmanirbhar Bharat: Striking the right balance in defence modernisation

The voter-on-the ground, primarily comprising rural and urban middle classes, neither read the likes of The Economist, New York Times, UK Guardian, Chatham House, Le Monde France, La Croix International Catholic News etc., nor hear the views on BBC, CNN or Bloomberg.

Besides, in a country with 80 per cent of the population comprising Hindus, the resurgence of Hindu nationalism renders the opinions of the elitist Western collective as redundant and powerless to influence or impact India’s electoral outcomes.

For too long, international institutions of the West have held sway in determining the pecking order of 170 nations, whether it is in determining their sovereign credit ratings or democratic credentials. In proportion to India’s growing heft, and being the largest democracy, it is a step in the right direction that India has set in motion the process of redefining the codes for an alternative ’Global Standard for Elections’, and creating its own metrics of gauging the democracy ratings index in collaboration with the Observer Research Foundation.

Impact Shorts

View All

Why Trump’s tariffs on India are a colossal mistake

Putin-Trump talks: Can a fragile trust lead to a Ukraine ceasefire?

Modi 3.0 is expected to be ‘bigger, bolder, stronger’

Much has transformed during Modi’s decadal tenure. India has indeed emerged as the nation of the decade, and a critical player in just about every issue pivotal to playing peace-maker on geo-political tensions, or issues facing the planet. India’s inclusive economic growth under Modi and its expanding global ascendence has made it a formidable global power.

It is therefore no surprise that Modi as the front runner is poised for a successive third term, and is expected to return in a stronger avatar in 2024. Should that happen, the pace of economic reforms and saturation of flagship schemes is expected to accelerate.

An industrial prime minister helming the fifth largest economy is an intimidating prospect for the US and Western nations, as the more the axis of economic power steadily shifts towards India, one expects negative news blitzes from foreign soil to further intensify.

Why West fears a stronger India

This is exactly what the Western mainstream media in cahoots with India’s opposition parties, and external lobbyists are striking at. They would prefer an electoral outcome that throws up a rag-a-tag coalition with a weakened prime minister, one who would be subservient to their business and political interests in preference to a strong, assertive and nationalist PM who would pursue nation-first interests, undaunted by the US or the Western powers.

We are living through a period of tumultuous change, as the global order crumbles, and the writ of multilateral institutions is ineffective in controlling geopolitical tensions. India needs a strong central leadership in order to negotiate resolutely with powerful countries, and pursue what is best for our national interest.

‘Too big to ignore’

Free market economies do not thrive under totalitarian regimes. Nor do they invest in countries that indulge in curtailing civil liberties, nor can they do business with discriminatory regimes that persecute minorities or differentiate on grounds of religion, race or caste.

Even Modi’s fiercest critics within and outside the country would be compelled to grudgingly capitulate and accede that during ten years of the Modi era, the BJP-led government has established India as a formidable global economic power and an investment destination of choice, which is one of the strongest testaments to the health of a free, fair and vibrant democracy.

Against projections of weakening GDP global growth pegged at 3.2 per cent, India is bucking the trend with the IMF expecting Indian GDP to achieve 6.8 per cent in FY ‘24-‘25. Multinationals are expanding their manufacturing base into India steadily due to predictability of policies and a stable political regime. Which is why we have Tesla, Apple, and Samsung lining up to invest in India.

Why crackdown on money power is vital for free elections

Why exactly is the overseas media, business lobbyists or Opposition parties like Congress and AAP targeting India’s democratic process? It is because the Modi-led government during its decadal regime has relentlessly cracked down on the parallel economy and the systemic opacity of electoral funding. This is not an India-centric concern alone. Big money and powerful countries do have a tendency to meddle and manoeuvre electoral outcomes across democracies.

Vested lobbyists then get shriller in accusing Indian media and institutions like the ED and CBI of becoming “a cruel propaganda arm of the ruling party”, and escalating the rhetoric of “a crackdown on free speech…there will be no Constitution, and no elections in future if Modi wins” etc.

A distinct separation of powers

The first principle of responsible journalism is to “be constructively adversarial with the government of the day, as also to give the Opposition an equal platform for debate and dissent”.

Those who bemoan India as a flawed democracy, my rebuttal is that had government muzzled popular opinion:

• How then does the voter have access to the diversity of opinion expressed on mainstream and raucous social media?

• How has the ruling BJP lost state elections frequently if there was no level playing field for the opposition?

• If there was no separation of powers between the executive and judiciary, how then did the Supreme Court rule against electoral bonds?

India’s electoral process

Today, Indian election campaigns are fought in war-rooms of political parties on the back of solid and transparent data available to one and all in order to generate excel-sheets, power-point presentations, targeted content sharing, survey and analysis reports, down to poll-booth level data available for each constituency.

For the Election Commission to function independently as the vigilant watchdog of this monumental exercise, and to seamlessly monitor and execute the size and scale of elections in a sub-continent sized country where people of diverse communities and religion come out and vote in larger numbers is reflective of a remarkable imposition of trust in a free and fair democratic process.

Conclusion

It is time India as the largest democracy stakes its claim amidst the comity of nations to reset the charter of democratic tenets in conformity to new age global yardsticks. This must be achieved through consultation with stakeholders who comprise the Global South. We need a revised universal lexicon that redefines the skewed metrics of evaluating democratic rankings away from the proprietary held by the West-centric V-Dem ‘Index of Democracy’ or ‘Press Freedom Index’ that act as the sole arbiters of democracies for 170 nations.

Such an index would serve as a counter to the West-centric indexes who evaluate which nation is deemed a “full democracy”, “ half democracy” or “a autocratic democracy”.

India can then dispense with the Wests worldview on grading the standards of democracy in developing nations, as these nations come with their own complexities.

The author is ex-Chairperson for the Committee for Financial Inclusion, Niti Aayog. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Firstpost.