India: Human Rights Assessments (CRS Report for Congress)
| Release Date |
Revised April 24, 2024 |
| Report Number |
IF12198 |
| Report Type |
In Focus |
| Authors |
K. Alan Kronstadt |
| Source Agency |
Congressional Research Service |
| Older Revisions |
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Summary:
As reported by the State Department’s 2022 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices (Human Rights
Reports or HRRs), India is a multiparty, federal,
parliamentary democracy. States and union territories have
primary responsibility for maintaining law and order, and
the central government provides policy oversight. India is
identified by U.S. government agencies, the United
Nations, and some nongovernmental organizations as the
site of numerous human rights abuses, many of them
significant, some seen as perpetrated by agents of state and
federal governments. The reported scope and scale of
abuses has increased under the leadership of Prime Minister
Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata
Party, particularly since their reelection in 2019.
Many analyses also warn of democratic backsliding in
India. For example, since 2019, the Sweden-based Varieties
of Democracies project has classified India as “an electoral
autocracy”; in 2023, it called India “one of the worst
autocratizers in the last 10 years.” Since 2021, U.S.-based
nonprofit Freedom House has redesignated India as “Partly
Free,” contending that “Modi and his party are tragically
driving India itself toward authoritarianism.” The New
Delhi government issued a “rebuttal” of the Freedom House
conclusions, calling them “misleading, incorrect, and
misplaced.” The following sections describe selected areas
of human rights concerns.
