The latest V-Dem Democracy Report for 2026 is titled Unraveling the Democratic Era? As far as India is concerned, the question mark is not necessary. The answer is evident in the one-way slide in the country’s ranking since 2014. On the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI), India’s latest rank is 106 out of 179 countries. We were 65 in 2014, 90 in 2017, 100 in 2025, and here we are.
The LDI is just one of five indices maintained by the Sweden-based institute. The others measure the health of a country’s electoral system, the rule of law and rights protection, participatory democracy, public discourse and equality. India’s score on each of these counts has slid from tolerable or improving levels in 2014 to unmistakably undemocratic depths today.
India’s LDI is now at levels not seen since the Emergency of 1975. The other indicators showing the most severe deterioration include freedom of expression, engagement of civil society in policy making, legislative oversight of the executive and protection of citizen rights. India continues to be classified as an electoral autocracy, a depth we first plumbed in 2017. If we haven’t slipped further, it is because the powers that be still hide behind the fig leaf of multi-party elections, while attendant systems' judicial independence have long ceased to perform their functions.
The V-Dem report lumps India in the category of ‘worst autocratisers’. We are long into the trajectory of what is called the ‘third wave of autocratization" and have become a central figure in the worldwide reversal of democratic gains, a model for other autocratic systems in South Asia.
While this decline is the lived experience of all Indians, and therefore no surprise, the most alarming findings in the V-Dem 2026 report relate to the simultaneous collapse of democracy in seemingly disparate bastions. Globally, democratic levels have fallen back to levels last seen in 1978, the report says. Approximately 74% of the world's population now lives in autocracies. The US has been downgraded in the latest report from a "liberal democracy" to an “electoral democracy”, with an astonishing decline in Donald Trump’s second presidency.
From the findings of the report, it is apparent that the patterns of autocratisation across countries—for instance, India, USA, Israel and Hungary—are similar. They follow the same trajectory: projection of a maximum leader, coalition formation with religious and racial extremists, bankrolling by billionaires, media suppression, judicial capture, rights curtailment, electoral manipulation, and security dog whistling.
Previous V-Dem reports have highlighted analogous aggrandisement of leaders in Hungary (Viktor Orbán), India (Narendra Modi), and Israel (Benjamin Netanyahu). The latest report records the USA's stunning decline under Donald Trump, with a 24% drop in the LDI rank in one year, falling from 20th rank to 51st.
Assaults on freedom of the press, the first domino to fall, are common to these countries. So is the attempt to compromise or tame the judiciary. Orbán and Netanyahu have both waged war on their Supreme Courts, and Trump packed his with pliant judges.
The leaders speak the language of the poor but keep the company of billionaires, most of them from the Epstein Class, whose sole interest in public affairs is the tearing down of regulatory mechanisms. Autocratising leaders are all united by a keen interest in ‘cleaning up’ the electoral rolls or redistricting of constituencies.
It is simultaneous and appears analogous, but uncanny in similarity, as if one agency was controlling it.