The source for this analysis comes from V-Dem project. Specifically related to India, the V-Dem results are highly questionable. Their results have been rebutte

The source for this analysis comes from V-Dem project. Specifically related to India, the V-Dem results are highly questionable. Their results have been rebutted point-by-point in this (paywalled) piece [1]. I will highlight one aspect of the questionable results from the analysis about India. There's a "Clean elections index" in the V-Dem project which is about absence of registration fraud, irregularities, election violence etc. Interestingly India's clean elections index score keeps sliding downward after 1998. Note that India was under officially declared emergency from 1975-77 and an election was held in 1977. The V-Dem clean election index doesn't reflect this phenomenon. India adopted the electronic voting machines (EVM) sometime between 1998-2001. Before using EVM, paper ballots would be used for elections. It is well documented [2] that EVMs have helped ensuring freer and fairer elections. Anecdotally I would remember so many incidents of booth-capturing (described in [2]) and re-elections due to irregularities, prior to the EVM era. [1] - https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/an-analysis-of-the-v-dem-data-on-the-decline-of-democracy-in-india-reveals-interesting-insightsabout-v-dem https://swarajyamag.com/ideas/an-analysis-of-the-v-dem-data-... [2] - https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/04/05/indias-electoral-democracy-how-evms-curb-electoral-fraud/ https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/04/05/indias-el...