Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Democratic backsliding in India


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Consensus is that the topic is notable but the content is too poor to keep it in mainspace. This can be draftified on request via WP:REFUND.  Sandstein  19:15, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Democratic backsliding in India

 * – ( View AfD View log )

Violates WP:NOTADVOCACY / WP:NOTOPINION – it's a WP:COATRACK article created to attack one of the political factions in India. Already article title reads like WP:OR by the article creator as the wording is not confirmed in listed sources. Also, bitching about about Indian politics belongs elsewhere, for example in Politics of India. — kashmīrī  TALK  07:46, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Politics-related deletion discussions. —  kashmīrī  TALK  07:46, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of India-related deletion discussions. —  kashmīrī  TALK  07:46, 11 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Comment - Patrick Heller (2020), The age of reaction: Retrenchment populism in India and Brazil, International Sociology 2020, Vol. 35(6) 590–609, SAGE: "Two of the largest democracies in the global south – India and Brazil – have witnessed a dramatic turn to right-wing populism. Careful historical comparison reveals that the form of reaction is markedly different from other recent cases of democratic backsliding." Anyway, merge to Democratic backsliding. Joshua Jonathan  - Let's talk!  09:32, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per my message on talk page. There is already Democratic backsliding and Godi media that covered the content. The article is just WP:SYNTH which cobbled up few subjects by misrepresenting mainly opinions pieces. GenuineArt (talk) 09:40, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Disagree - Thank you for the time.
 * I advocate that this subject is huge enough to have an independant article, keeping in mind its gravity. And as far as SYNTH is concerned, I again have to disagree because I am not opining anything and please note that Narendra Modi article's lead section's last paragraph is about this very thing and it indeed mentions the phrase "democratic backsliding". Appu (talk) 14:43, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Comment - See Jaffrelot's recent book as an example of academic work concerning this topic. There exists ample scholarship. TrangaBellam (talk) 14:04, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * @TrangaBellam – Recommended reading: WP:EXIST. Cheers, — kashmīrī  TALK  18:43, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * , I did not vote either way because I cannot make up my mind. I will read the essay but we seem to have an uncountable number of them. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:58, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Agreed. My favourite for AfDs is WP:ATA.
 * By the way, hope you agree that not every topic of a book needs to be made into an encyclopaedia article. Hopefully, nobody will try to create an article Dengue mosquito larvae in Mumbai only because this exists. — kashmīrī  TALK  22:41, 11 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Disagree. Good try. Bad analogy. A local mosquito problem quite apparently does not enjoy as much notability as the democratic backsliding of what they call the largest democracy. The subject is quite a whole study in itself. In fact, you won't find a single credible outlet in the world that has not reported it. Hardly will you find a public intellectual in India that has not talked about it. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/24/destruction-indias-judicial-independence-is-almost-complete/ https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/amartya-sens-hopes-and-fears-for-indian-democracy https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/12/09/blood-and-soil-in-narendra-modis-india https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/07/31/the-pegasus-revelations-cast-doubt-on-the-health-of-indian-democracy https://time.com/collection/100-most-influential-people-2021/6096023/narendra-modi-leader/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-india-still-a-democracy-the-answer-isnt-so-clear-11618525073 https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-modi-threaten-indian-democracy-11559256676
 * In my personal opinion, you are not even trying the least to appear constructive in this consensus. Appu (talk) 13:59, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Firstly, I suggest you stop WP:BLUDGEONing the process by responding under each and every voice to delete the article. Secondly, whatever number of links to news, interviews and opinion pieces you paste here, it does not address the key issue of whether the matter should be dealt with in a standalone article. Political systems are in constant flux, the "level" and scope of democracy changes constantly in each and every country of the world (even though there is not even an agreed definition of democracy!). Creating such articles as "Worsening of democracy in India during AAA" or "Improvements to democracy in Angola during BBB", or, in general, "XXX changes to democracy in country YYY during ZZZ rule", is counter-productive in my view. We have dedicated articles, usually titled "Politics in YYY" that offer impassionate, long-term perspective on the political developments in the given country.
 * For your information, there is plenty of sources critically assessing what they call erosion of democracy in India during each of the previous governments in at least 50 years. Your focus on the last 2-3 years, based on press clippings, goes against WP:NOTNEWS. — kashmīrī  TALK  08:33, 13 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Disagree Hi Kashmiri,
 * It could be true that there might be technical faults from my side as I am a novice. I had paid full attention to not use any word that signals "advocacy" and I still feel I did a good job at it. If there's any controversial fragment in the article, I completely support its deletion regardless of who did it. I feel apprehensions as to what made it a COATRACK, since democratic backsliding is a one-whole study in itself, it might have been so that I added little more disproportionately of one of its subsidiary subjects than remaining others. In that case, I again will enjoy seeing it be deleted to make it fair [although I opine there are not so many of such things]. I don't understand how it sounded like an original research because I named it after an article that already existed on Wikipedia, in common usage, it is usually called here in India as "centralisation of power" or "Fascism" or similar stuff like that which to me didn't appear to fit the subject or this platform aptly [But it's not that the phrase is never used in Indian context in media whatsoever ]. If the current title is not good enough, then I again want it to be moved [if, with a consensus]. I am quite appalled by the usage of word 'bitching' since I feel the article looks like a good-faith one from all angles, you can certainly say that one editor could be "bitching" about something, but you can't say that Kamala Harris was also doing the same when she subtly hinted what this article talks about. Same in the case of Chief Justice of India. If you don't approve implicit hints then these are what Freedom House and Economist Intelligence Unit had to say. These to me seem like fair reasons as to why this article needs to exist. [By the way, I found out that Christophe Jaffrelot has written a book on more or less this subject. ] Appu (talk) 13:56, 12 October 2021 (UTC)


 * There are very many mentions of this phenomenon in the scholarly literature alone, and at least a few of the results (1, 2, 3) are substantive. WP:EXIST does not apply to topics that have coverage in reliable sources. The topic is obviously notable; the real question is whether it should be a standalone article, or whether it should be merged into Premiership of Narendra Modi (since that's what the sources discuss). There's a few mentions of Indira Gandhi and the Emergency as well, which is perhaps an argument to keep a standalone article. Vanamonde (Talk) 17:15, 12 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Weak keep if material can span beyond Modi. Either way, its claims should mostly be backed up with scholarly literature rather than depending too much on opinion pieces and attention grabbing articles reporting various individuals comparing Modi to Hitler. Yee no   (talk) 🍁 04:07, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per Kashmiri. Create Democracy in India (currently redirects to Politics of India) and expand with the scholarly sources provided here. desmay (talk) 16:17, 13 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Draftify, the phenomenon itself is obviously notable with significant scholarly works on it, the article however is not in a good shape as the sourcing is much weaker than it could be and part of it is a mismatch of material copied over from other articles. So the focus should be on cleanup rather than deletion, regarding whether it should be merged into the article on Narendra Modi or a subarticle (although I don't believe the sources are restricted solely to him) or into a new article on Democracy in India can be looked into later once this is more fleshed out. Tayi Arajakate  Talk 23:30, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Draftify I agree with Tayi Arajakate and Vanamonde. Try to fix the problems to get to a stable version and then decide on the status whether it's good, or be merged or moved to some other location — DaxServer (talk to me) 23:44, 15 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Return to draft or delete - this is an important subject, but written up terribly. It should either be removed from mainspace until it is improved, or deleted to better encourage a more serious re-write from the ground-up, as befitting the theme. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:46, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per Kashmiri. I concur with the suggestion to create Democracy in India, but this content is WP:TNT. Ifnord (talk) 14:43, 19 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Delete per Kashmiri and others. In case you want to retain some text, then merge with Politics of India and/or Electoral reforms. I am a long time IP with no registered account. I cleaned up Electoral reforms and related haphazardly grown article and randomly ended up here. 58.182.176.169 (talk) 18:23, 19 October 2021 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.