Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is threatening to turn the country into a one-party state. Recently, The Economist reported in an article citing Modi’s continuous effort to erode democratic checks and balances. 

Tip of the IceBurg:

The BJP government has been implementing fascist policies from the beginning of their tenure. From Lord Ram temple construction promise to making India a homogenous hindu society; BJP has set record of unprecedented violence and brutality. Recently, BJP’s only favorite journalist was arrested by the police on the charges of abetment of suicide. Some politicians declared this as an attack on free speech.  Arnab Goswami is the epitome of hatred and xenophobia in Indian Journalism. With Indian government’s support, Goswami spent just a week in police custody and India’s topmost judges ignored the court’s backlog of some 60,000 cases to schedule a bail hearing within a day of the anchor’s appeal, it is reported in the  article.

Stepping into the horror of authoritarianism:

Indian judiciary is worried about the democratic fabric of Indian government which is eroding day by day with the help of BJP consolidating Hindutva Ideology 

This government has done so much damage to personal liberty,” says Ajit Prakash Shah, a former high court judge. “But the courts, especially the supreme court, have watched this indiscriminate and violent trampling of dissent like mute spectators.”

The Economist quoted Vice-Dean of law at Oxford University and author of a paper, “Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts”, Tarunabh Khaitan, that at least during the emergency the threat was clear that details India’s institutional decay.

What we have now is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” he says. “There is no full-frontal big-ticket attack on democracy, but there are multiple, simultaneous attacks on all fronts.… We are sleepwalking into authoritarianism.”

Designing the new face of democracy in Delhi: 

The Economist reported that in the absence of strong opposition at the center, the most effective resistance to the BJP’s dominance lies in state capitals, as well in the press and more broadly in civil society.

“Opposition parties holding slim majorities in other big states, including Rajasthan and Maharashtra, are acutely aware of the BJP’s capacity to “persuade” defectors to its side. This recently happened in Madhya Pradesh, where Mr Modi’s party unceremoniously unseated Congress after luring away a chunk of its deputies,”

The Modi government has largely marginalized critical voices in the press by leaning on the big conglomerates that dominate the mainstream media, by favoring outlets that share its ideology, such as Goswami’s, and by flooding social media with agitprop, the article reported.