V-Dem ranked India 106th among 179 countries on its 2025 Electoral Democracy Index with a score of 0.38.
P Chidambaram said India’s V-Dem democracy score was at its lowest level since 1975.
V-Dem classified India as an electoral autocracy and cited declining media independence, freedom of expression and pressure on civil society and opposition.
India’s V-Dem Score Hits Lowest Since 1975, Ranks 106th on Electoral Democracy Index
P Chidambaram flags India’s 106th rank among 179 countries as V-Dem gives it a 0.38 score for 2025 and classifies it as an electoral autocracy.
Summary
Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP P Chidambaram on Tuesday flagged India’s 106th rank among 179 countries in the V-Dem Institute’s 2026 Electoral Democracy Index, saying the country’s score was at its lowest since 1975.
V-Dem gave India a score of 0.38 on the Electoral Democracy Index and placed it in the “electoral autocracy” category alongside Kazakhstan and Pakistan. Chidambaram’s remarks come as the Congress continues to raise concerns over electoral processes and democratic institutions, with Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi also repeatedly alleging “vote chori”.
“Without comment: India ranks 106th among 179 countries on the Electoral Democracy Index. V-Dem's democracy index score for India is at its lowest since 1975," Chidambaram posted on X.
According to ANI, India was ranked 105th on V-Dem’s Liberal Democracy Index, with a score of 0.26. The institute classified Afghanistan and Turkmenistan as closed autocracies.
In its assessment of South and Central Asia, V-Dem said only 2 per cent of people in the region enjoy electoral democracy, with Nepal and Sri Lanka in this category. It said a negligibly small proportion of people live in the three “grey zone” democracies — Bhutan, Mongolia and the Maldives.
V-Dem uses Population-Weighted Measures to assess how much democracy the average global citizen statistically enjoys. The methodology uses country averages and gives the same weight to advances in smaller countries such as Seychelles and Timor-Leste as it does to India or the United States.
ANI reported that V-Dem has argued that India has been undergoing slow autocratization since 2009 and described the trend as a “systematic dismantling of democratic institutions”. The institute cited deteriorations in freedom of expression and media independence, harassment of journalists critical of the government, and attacks on civil society and the opposition as reasons for the decline.
The V-Dem Institute is led by Associate Professor Steven Wilson and is based at the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, ANI reported.
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