The US government funded NGO “Freedom House” published its annual report on global political rights and liberties recently. The report titled “Freedom in the World 2021 – Democracy under Siege” published the report on political freedom across the world.
Key findings of the report
In the latest report, the status of India as a democracy and free society was downgraded to “partly free”. Report also says that, it seems India have abandoned its potential to serve as the global democratic leader. It also highlighted that, the downgraded rank of India from upper ranks of free nations will particularly damage the impact on global democratic standards. India has been given a score of 67 out of 100. It further highlights that, the political rights and civil liberties in India has deteriorated since the year 2014 because of increasing pressure on human rights organisations, rising intimidation of academics & journalists, and incidents like lynching.
Background
In the freedom house reports for the year 2018, 2019 and 2020 had rated India as “free” even though its scores were declined during that period from 77 to 71 on a scale of 100. In the latest report, India had a score of 67 out of 100.
Freedom in world report
The freedom in world report was launched by the freedom house in the year 1973. In the report, it assessed the level of freedom across the countries ranked them on the basis of numerical score and declared the countries as “free”, “partly free” or “not free”. This report if one of the oldest quantitative measures of democracy.