‘What Variety Of Democracy?’: PM’s Economic Advisor Sanyal Attacks V-Dem Over Sweden’s Plan

Sanjeev Sanyal, an economist, author and part of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PM-EAC), has attacked Sweden’s Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute, questioning the nation’s latest plan to cut migration. The Gothenburg-based V-Dem Institute in its 2024 report released in March had called India one of the “worst autocratisers” in the world in recent years.

“So Sweden is introducing a scheme for “foreign-born” citizens to “voluntarily” leave the country. Note that this is for people who already have a Swedish passport. Wonder what variety of democracy this implies? Am sure the supercomputer at @vdeminstitute can compute exactly how many points should be granted for this in the Democracy Index,” he wrote on X.

Sweden has a voluntary exit scheme — 10,000 Swedish crowns ($960) plus travel costs — for refugees to leave the country. The country is looking to include naturalised Swedish citizens and families of migrants in it.

The country remained an “electoral autocracy” at the end of 2023 after first being categorised as one in 2018, the institute said in a report titled ‘Democracy Winning and Losing at the Ballot’.

The Sweden-based institute categorises countries into four transitional phases between democratisation and autocratisation: liberal democracy, electoral democracy, electoral autocracy and closed autocracy. It defines an electoral autocracy as one in which multiparty elections for the executive exist albeit with “insufficient levels of fundamental requisites such as freedom of expression and association, and free and fair elections”.

The V-Dem report said that the process of autocratisation is on in 42 countries – including India – that collectively account for 35% of the world’s population. “India, with 18% of the world’s population, accounts for about half of the population living in autocratising countries,” the institute said. The report said that the Narendra Modi-led government in India has used laws on sedition, defamation, and counterterrorism to silence critics.

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V-Dem said that India, along with El Salvador and Mauritius, was among the worst government offenders when it came to increasing efforts to censor the media.

The report said that the Indian government also continued to suppress the freedom of religion.