Global Challenges to Democracy Report No.240
Report No. 240: Is Trump Adding to the Backsliding of the ‘World’s Biggest Democracy’?
Debasish Roy Chowdhury
August 14, 2025

Image: The White House / Wiki Commons
This report examines the consequences for India of a second Trump presidential term. With his steep tariffs and cheap insults, Trump has eroded a decades-old Indian public consensus of a pro-America policy and revived old animosities towards the US. If an estranged India’s strategic engagement with America and the democratic world loosens, it can only be more bad news for its troubled democracy. Not that America has ever seemed to care about Modi’s assaults on democracy, or he, about its sensitivities.