Failed state

• Failed state is unable to project authority over its territory and peoples, and it cannot protect its national boundaries. 
• The governing capacity of a failed state is unable to fulfill the administrative and organizational tasks required to control people and resources and can provide only minimal public services. Its citizens no longer believe that their government is legitimate, and the state becomes illegitimate in the eyes of the international community.
• A failed state is composed of feeble and flawed institutions. Often, the executive barely functions, while the legislature, judiciary, bureaucracy, and armed forces have lost their capacity and professional independence. 
• A failed state suffers from crumbling infrastructures, faltering utility supplies and educational and health facilities, and deteriorating basic human-development indicators, such as infant mortality and literacy rates. 
• Failed states create an environment of flourishing corruption and negative growth rates, where honest economic activity cannot flourish.
• A strong state provides core guarantees to its citizens and others under its jurisdiction in the three interrelated realms of security, economics, and politics. State failure comes in degrees and is often a function of both the collapse of state institutions and societal collapse.
• A failed state cannot maintain a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and minimize internal conflict. It cannot formulate or implement public policies to effectively build infrastructure and deliver services or effective and equitable economic policies. 
• It cannot provide for the representation and political empowerment of its citizens or protect civil liberties and fundamental human rights. State failure manifests itself when a state can no longer deliver physical security, a productive economic environment, and a stable political system for its people.
• The total collapse of the state marks the final, extreme phase of state failure, and very few states can be described as completely failed or collapsed. 
• Many states suffer from various degrees of weakness and are therefore potential candidates for failure. Weak states were failing with increasing frequency, most of them in Africa but also a handful in Asia and the Middle East, and failed states are known to be hospitable to dangerous warlords and groups that commit terrorist acts. 
• Somalia and Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, are examples of states failure completely.
• Understanding the dynamics of state failure and strengthening weak nation-states in the developing world assumes new urgency.
• 25 Most failed states in the world are:

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India qualifies many aspects of 'failed state' but not yet failed. But if you look from view point of poorest man it is definitely a failed state.

Fragile State Index for India 2017 is 72/178

Fragile States Index 2017 by Fund for Peace 

 

• The Fragile States Index 2017, produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also in identifying when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink of failure.
• Though the FSI does not predict unrest or turmoil, it does provide early warning of the conditions that can likely give rise to instability.
• India's ranking is 72/178 and 77.9/120 slipping by 1.6 points from previous year. However among BRICS nations India is better than Russia(67) only, whereas China (85), South Africa(96) and Brazil(110) stands better than India.

• If a shock of some variety were to occur - from a natural disaster to a recession to localized communal violence – that such events in any of these countries could have dire consequences given the pre-existing conditions of fragility.
• While the economic trajectory tells one part of the story, the gap in public services between the urban areas and rural areas (where over 60% of the population still live) hints at growing disparities.
• During past decade 2007-2017, worsening was significant for India. All our neighboring countries have improved during the decade.

Read the source - Fragile States Index Annual Report 2017

Other than change of guard following adverse elections results, democracy is non existent in India. Citizen rights undermined, justice dispensation limited to upper classes, civic services at their worst especially in villages and urban poor areas, rule of the law never followed, and so on is reflected in the Fragile States Index 2017 showing at least 106 countries better placed i.e. 72/178 is matter of shame for this largest democracy in the world even after 70 years of independence. Almost all neighboring countries did get better ranks than India speaks volumes about our chest thumping of democracy and claims of emerging economy shouting. Rather we have to guard ourselves against slipping into the category of 'failed states'.