India Is 'One of the Worst Autocratisers in the Last 10 Years,' Says 2023 V-Dem Report https://thewire.in/rights/india-autocratiser-v-dem-report-2023 Vasundhara Sirnate 07/MAR/2023 Clearly, the trend towards autocratisation in many parts of the world began intensifying in 2020. This new V-Dem report lists 42 countries as “autocratising” at the end of 2022 – a record number.
The report titled Defiance in the Face of Autocratization has further asserted that “advances in global levels of democracy made over the last 35 years have been wiped out.” The findings of this report should be a cause of global concern for politicians and policy-makers alike. The report indicates that today there are more closed autocracies than liberal democracies and only 13% of the world’s humans (approximately one billion people) live in liberal democracies.
Amongst the various population-weighted indicators that the report uses to make its determinations on the health of democracy in various countries, it pays particular attention to freedom of expression (declining in 35 countries), increased government censorship of the media (declining in 47 countries), the worsening state repression of civil society actors (going downhill in 37 countries) and a decline in the quality of elections in 30 countries. It also lists Armenia, Greece and Mauritius as “democracies in steep decline”.
India Has Significantly Less Academic Freedom Now Than 10 Years Ago: New V-Dem Report https://thewire.in/education/india-has-significantly-less-academic-freedom-now-than-10-years-ago-new-v-dem-report India 'demonstrates the pernicious relationship between populist governments, autocratisation, and constraints on academic freedom,' the 2023 update on the report says.