The recent survey by Open Society Foundation titled ‘Open Society Barometer: Can democracy deliver’ appears to have rekindled some hope as it found that, globally, 86 percent people have faith in democracy. Perhaps it’s even more encouraging for us as the percentage of faithfuls in democracy in Bangladesh is five percent higher than the global average. However, to overlook the small print would mean not noticing the danger signals as democratic backsliding globally, and in our homeland, could lead us to a nightmarish situation.  It is already ironic that while we are observing the International Democracy day today, the most authoritative evaluation of the state of democracy worldwide, V-dem Institute’s Democracy Report 202 3 noted that “Advances in global levels of democracy made over the last 35 years” were “wiped out.” V-Dem Institute, under the University of Gothenburg  in Sweden produces the largest global dataset on democracy for 202 countries from 1789 to 2022. V...