On This Independence Day, It Is Instructive to Take Stock of How Free India Really Is

Every Independence Day, India celebrates freedom. On 15 August 2026, the country marked its 80th Independence Day, nearly eight decades after the end of British rule. That is a long enough period to ask not merely what India has achieved in economic growth, infrastructure, military power or international standing, but something more fundamental to the occasion itself: how free is India today? The question is especially appropriate because the Constitution that independent India gave itself expressly promised its citizens “liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship.”

There are, of course, different ways of defining freedom. Fortunately, we do not have to depend upon a single definition or a single organisation. Several major international indices attempt to measure different dimensions of freedom: political rights and civil liberties, personal freedom, freedom of expression, rule of law and economic freedom. Their methodologies differ considerably, but when India is compared with Britain and with Canada, Australia and New Zealand—the major Commonwealth realms that retained the Crown in their constitutional arrangements—the pattern is remarkably consistent.

Latest index	India	United Kingdom	Canada	Australia	New Zealand
Freedom House: Freedom in the World 2026	62/100 — Partly Free	92/100	97/100	94/100	99/100
Human Freedom Index 2025	110/165	19/165	12/165	10/165	3/165
World Press Freedom Index 2026	157/180	18/180	20/180	33/180	22/180
WJP Rule of Law Index 2025	86/143	14/143	13/143	11/143	5/143
Economic Freedom of the World 2025	86/165	13/165	11/165	7/165	3/165

The figures come from Freedom House, the Cato and Fraser institutes, Reporters Without Borders, the World Justice Project and the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World project. In the four ranking-based indices, a lower rank is better; Freedom House instead awards a score out of 100, with a higher score indicating greater freedom. The Human Freedom Index and Economic Freedom of the World 2025 use 2023 data, the latest year for which sufficiently comprehensive internationally comparable data were available to their authors. The broad picture nevertheless comes from five separate frameworks measuring substantially different things.

Freedom House provides perhaps the clearest place to begin because its detailed scorecard shows precisely where India loses points. India receives 4 out of 4 for whether its head of government is chosen through free and fair elections and another 4 out of 4 for whether its national legislators are elected through free and fair elections. In other words, India is not being classified as “Partly Free” because Freedom House regards it as lacking elections. The deductions come substantially from what happens outside the polling booth.

On free and independent media, India receives 2 out of 4; on religious freedom, 2 out of 4; on academic freedom, 2 out of 4; and on the ability to express personal views on sensitive matters without fear of surveillance or retribution, 2 out of 4. Freedom of assembly receives 2 out of 4, as does freedom for nongovernmental organisations. Freedom House points to legal restrictions on gatherings, internet disruptions, pressures on NGOs through foreign-funding rules, harassment and threats directed at journalists, broad laws affecting expression, and concerns over surveillance. These are not peripheral matters in an index of freedom; they are precisely the things the index is designed to measure.

The position becomes still more striking under rule of law. Freedom House gives India 2 out of 4 for judicial independence and only 1 out of 4 for whether due process prevails in civil and criminal matters. Its report cites an understaffed and severely backlogged justice system, lengthy pretrial detention, corruption within parts of law enforcement, security laws permitting detention on vaguely defined offences, and concerns surrounding the criminal codes implemented from 2024 onward. The same assessment gives India 2 out of 4 on the ability to own property and establish private businesses without undue interference.

The Human Freedom Index casts the net considerably wider. Its 2025 edition uses 87 indicators covering rule of law, security, movement, religion, association and assembly, expression and information, personal relationships, size of government, property rights, sound money, international trade and regulation. It describes the freedom being measured as the absence of coercive constraint and combines personal, civil and economic liberty into one broad assessment. On that measure India ranks 110th of 165 jurisdictions, compared with New Zealand at 3rd, Australia at 10th, Canada at 12th and the United Kingdom at joint 19th.

Then there is freedom of the press. In the 2026 World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders places India 157th out of 180 countries. The corresponding positions are 18th for the United Kingdom, 20th for Canada, 22nd for New Zealand and 33rd for Australia. India ranks 160th on RSF's political indicator, 141st on its legal indicator and 158th on its security indicator, showing that the overall result is not being driven by a single component.

RSF explains India's position by pointing to violence and intimidation directed at journalists, concentrated media ownership, increasingly overt political alignment among sections of the media, legal action against journalists, the use of national-security and anti-terror provisions, and governmental powers affecting digital information. It also records online harassment, threats, physical attacks, criminal prosecutions and arbitrary arrests affecting journalists. None of the comparator countries is presented by RSF as flawless: its reports identify problems in Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as well. Yet even after those deficiencies are taken into account, all four stand between 18th and 33rd in the world while India stands at 157th.

The World Justice Project's 2025 Rule of Law Index produces much the same contrast from a different direction. It measures constraints on government power, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice and criminal justice. India ranks 86th out of 143 countries; New Zealand is 5th, Australia 11th, Canada 13th and the United Kingdom 14th. The index therefore asks a different question from a press-freedom organisation or a civil-liberties organisation, yet the relative positions scarcely change.

Economic liberty supplies one more dimension. The Economic Freedom of the World 2025 report examines how far people are free to work, transact, contract, own and use property and make economic choices, measuring five broad areas: size of government, legal system and property rights, sound money, freedom to trade internationally and regulation. India ranks 86th of 165 jurisdictions, compared with New Zealand at 3rd, Australia at joint 7th, Canada at 11th and Britain at 13th. Once again, the gap is not small.

The Indian component scores are illuminating because they show where the economic constraints lie. India does relatively well on the index's “size of government” measure, ranking 29th, but falls to 71st on legal system and property rights, 90th on sound money, 128th on freedom to trade internationally, and 109th on regulation. In other words, India's overall position is not simply a consequence of being a developing country with a large government. Significant parts of the shortfall arise from the legal and regulatory environment in which individuals and businesses are permitted to act.

One may agree or disagree with particular judgments made by any one of these organisations. What is difficult to ignore is the convergence. An organisation measuring civil and political liberty, another measuring human freedom broadly, another looking specifically at journalism, another measuring rule of law, and another measuring economic choice all place India far below the same group of countries. The parameters vary; the pattern does not.

And there is one fact that gives these numbers their real significance on Independence Day: the date. These are not India's rankings in 1950, when the Republic had just been established. They are not its rankings twenty or forty years after independence, while the institutions of a new country might still have been regarded as works in progress. They are India's rankings as it celebrates its 80th Independence Day.

India's independence struggle was a struggle conducted in the name of freedom, and the constitutional order that followed explicitly promised liberty to the citizens of the new Republic. Nearly eight decades later, India is 110th in the Human Freedom Index, 157th in the World Press Freedom Index, 86th in the Rule of Law Index and 86th in Economic Freedom of the World. Freedom House does not classify the country as “Free”; it gives India 62 out of 100 and calls it “Partly Free.” Those are the standings after eighty Independence Days.

India removed the Crown from its constitutional order and became a republic. Britain retained it, and Canada, Australia and New Zealand remain sovereign Commonwealth realms in which the King is head of state. Today, those countries occupy some of the highest positions in the world on the very indices that measure political liberty, civil liberty, freedom of the press, rule of law and economic choice, while India remains far below them. On India's 80th Independence Day, perhaps that comparison is worth leaving exactly where it is—for us to think about.