Upcoming challenges for two of the largest democracies - India & Indonesia

The fate of democracy in both India and Indonesia remains precarious. In both, the main threat to pluralist democracy is identity-based majoritarian nationalism

In the next couple of months two of the largest democracies in the world — India and Indonesia — will have their national elections. At a time when democracy is under considerable pressure everywhere, the electoral and general democratic outcome in these two countries containing in total more than one and a half billion people (more than one and a half times the population in democratic West plus Japan and Australia) will be closely observed.

Let’s start with India. Many Indians, while preening about their country being the largest democracy, are often in denial about how threadbare the quality of