Bangladesh four spots up on Democracy Index

Sayeed Muhammad of DOT
Bangladesh has rose four notches up on the latest Democracy Index, compared to the previous year, says the Economist Intelligence Unit.
That falls in line with the EIU’s finding that Asia recorded the highest improvement in its score out of any region, reports BDnews
Bangladesh ranks 88th with an overall score of 5.57 against the 92nd position with a score of 5.43 a year ago. Bangladesh’s score on last year’s index had fallen to its lowest in a decade.
Despite gains on the latest index, Bangladesh is still classified as a hybrid regime and is way behind India, a flawed democracy, that climbed only one notch to the 41st spot.
Overall, the report comes as good news to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina who formed a government for an unprecedented fourth term amid allegations of vote rigging from the opposition alliance.
Dspite a growing disillusionment with formal political institutions, political participation is on the rise in almost every region around the world, with the population being spurred into political action, the report adds.
The index which assesses the global state of democracy in 2018 also reveals that in the past decade, women’s political participation has improved more than any other single indicator in the model.
The EIU report released yesterday says only countries with scores above 8 are categorised as “full” democracies.
Little change was felt in Asia’s two largest democracies: India (ranked 41st) and Indonesia (65th). Both are readying themselves for elections in 2019.