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South Asia is home to roughly a quarter of the world’s eight billion people and nearly half of all of Asia, giving the region outsized demographic, political and economic weight. Except Afghanistan, the seven other countries in this region are electoral democracies. These include three of the world’s ten largest democracies in terms of registered voters – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
 
New temperature checks on democracy and its quality have just taken place this month in India and Pakistan, while Bangladesh heads to polls in a few weeks’ time and announcing a new constitutional mechanism. For a region that prides itself in its chosen democratic ethos, the diagnosis is not looking good.
 
India just held state elections in Bihar, a test case for the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s popularity and nationalistic political agenda with religious overtones. In Pakistan, a string of by-elections for the national and provincial legislatures took place with a similar test of support for the policies of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

The region should ditch flirting with majoritarianism in the name of democracy.

-Adnan Rehmat

 
In both countries, the ruling coalitions led by Modi’s BJP party and Sharif’s........

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