this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (4 children)

can you even call it a democracy anymore?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Of course not. India used to be secular. the far right Hindu extremism is taking over. Also it's so good to be able to post this and not be trolled by pro Modi trolls. The amount of concentration of power due to lack of alternatives is so scary.

PS: I'm an Indian who now lives in Australia.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Just to clarify, the lack of alternatives creates a vaccine creating an almost defacto win for Modi et all. that's the part of democracy collapsing

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Yes it is still a democracy, maybe a democrazy. There are no widespread voter suppression, disenfranchisement.

The most recent election has shown that.

There are some pockets of election tampering, violence but nowhere widespread.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

What makes it not a democracy ?

a form of government in which the people have the authority to deliberate and decide legislation ("direct democracy"), or to choose governing officials to do so ("representative democracy").

Going by wikipedia, India fits in as a representative democracy. None of the elections are contested despite widespread corruptions. Its pretty much assumed all major parties do so and thus in a level field.

Where most have issue is:

Features of democracy often include freedom of assembly, association, property rights, freedom of religion and speech, citizenship, consent of the governed, voting rights, freedom from unwarranted governmental deprivation of the right to life and liberty, and minority rights.

India has some level of trouble with almost all of those. Both in past as well as some ongoing.

A large part of the reason is all available government choices are shitty in some sense or other. Modi is bad but so was their opposition. India didn't start having these issues magically the day modi came to power. In that sense many blaming him ignore how deep rooted these problamatic views are in general soceity (at least in some areas and communities).

My point is that the many issues pointed here stems from a deeper problem and exists despite India being a democracy not because it isn't. Infact if it was nearly as authoritarian as many claim, it would have plunged into greater chaos.