“The debate now veers around the reliability of the EVMs. Would they be the determinant of victory rather than public’s will? Two recent books and a Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School, report on the risks to democratic elections of cyber attacks and information operations raise some uncomfortable questions. How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt and People v. Democracy by Yascha Mounk debate the direction of democracy globally. The lessons apply to India under Modi”.

While Prime Minister Narendra Modi accompanied visiting French President Emmanuel Macron on the Ganges at Varanasi, at times hand-in-hand, for an iconic view of the Ghats, India hovered over multiple domestic inflexion points. While agreements were signed with France for strategic engagement, either by “reciprocal logistics” to enable mutual utilization of military facilities in the Indian Ocean or by advancing opaque defense purchases like the Rafale deal, or the kick-starting of the stalled giant nuclear project at Jataipur, promising untested EPR design reactors; farmers marched, many barefooted and hungry, towards the center of India’s financial capital Mumbai. Rural India, where still a majority of Indian voters reside, was signaling that India could not become a great power by lopsided growth and mere promises of achhe din.

The Modi government has, at best, just a year left or less, if early Lok Sabha elections are held, in tandem with the crucial state elections, due by December, in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where the BJP faces anti-incumbency. But the Modi slogan of a corruption-free India is no longer paraded. The Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi duo fleeing after swindling Punjab National Bank of over Rs 13,000 crore have dented the government’s reputation. A photo of Nirav amid top Indian businessman with PM Modi, and a video with prominent jewelers where the PM identifies “Mehul Bhai” by name while speaking, are  seen as clues to their coziness with the regime.

The BJP’s poor performance in the recent bypolls in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and even Uttar Pradesh fuel the debate that the re-election of Modi, taken as a given months ago, may no longer be certain. The debate now veers around the reliability of the EVMs. Would they be the determinant of victory rather than public’s will? Two recent books and a Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School, report on the risks to democratic elections of cyber attacks and information operations raise some uncomfortable questions. How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt and People v. Democracy by Yascha Mounk debate the direction of democracy globally. The lessons apply to India under Modi.

Levitsky-Ziblatt argue that in the 21st century democracies are endangered, not so much by military coups, like in the 20th century South Asia, or by younger hereditary rulers in the Gulf or by clerical rule (supreme leader in Iran), but the election of populist autocrats. The playbook is old, as Mussolini and Hitler also took the electoral route, albeit laced with threat of street violence, but the methodology is now subtler. The elected leader debases state institutions by weakening the judiciary, putting compliant appointees in control of the Election Commission, handing over investigative agencies to reliable and ruthless protégés for targeting businessmen and opposition figures, emasculates Parliament by negating its checks and balances. Intelligence agencies are co-opted or devalued, as Trump does regularly, and media bought or bludgeoned into submission.

The Mounk book explores flagging interest in democracy amongst youth and the millennials. While 71 per cent of those born in the 1930s in Europe and the US value living in a democracy, only 29 per cent of those born in the 1980s are so inclined. In fact, a quarter of the millennials think democracy is a bad way to run a nation. In polls in India, there is a tendency to favor authoritarian rulers, something that feeds Modi’s persona as a leader unmatched by his peers. Social media algorithms entrap users in vacuum chambers of similar prejudices and thus curtail debate. The leaders use the reach of Twitter and Facebook to perpetuate their skewed thoughts and browbeat opponents directly, or by their armies of bots. President Donald Trump routinely terms independent news outlets as “fake news”. A former Indian Army Chief, and now minister of state in the Modi government, coined the phrase “presstitutes”. As Rudyard Kipling wrote: “For the colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady, Are sisters under their skins”. It seems so are the new breed of populist, rabble-rousing politicians across all continents.

The Belfer report is more worrisome as it reflects a debate in India that the Aam Aadmi Party initiated but was ignored — the possibility of integrity of EVMs being compromised — and thus the electoral process itself getting highjacked by the ruling party. In the US, the states have greater control over the electoral process, but two methods are used for vote casting. One, is optical scanners (OS), where voters cast a ballot by traditional pen and paper, or electronic ballot marking device, and then, the ballot is run through scanning machines. Thus, while an electronic tabulation is retained in the machine, so are the original paper ballots as physical record for subsequent audit or vote verification. Two, is direct recording electronic (DRE), as is done in India with option, as now proposed, of voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). The problem is that the test audit of VVPATs by the Election Commission is of small samples and in a few constituencies.

The Belfer report concludes that “voting machines can be compromised via physical tampering (including using removable media) or through external connectivity (e.g. WiFi)”. It recommends that the OS method is safer than the DRE machines, including with VVPATs. This is a matter that needs debate in India, as a second time, after Indira Gandhi in the 1970s, a powerful Prime Minister is bending institutions to his own will. Therefore, the integrity of the electoral process needs to be not only safeguarded against the slightest doubt, but also done so publicly.

The next year is critical for Indian democracy, as indeed the idea of India as enshrined in the Constitution. While in 1975-77, when the Emergency was declared, the world was still mired in Cold War and democratic rule had not flowered globally. Now even the US and its Western allies are casting doubts on the efficacy of its functioning. President Xi Jinping having seized almost total power from the party and the military posits the Chinese model of economic success via authoritarian structures. Can India keep the flame of democracy and liberalism alive in Asia as a counterpoint? That is the drama that is about to unfold in coming year.

(The author is a former Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs)