Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio.

I'm your host, Jason Palmer.

Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

Ah, Sweden, home to quaint Christmas markets,

Pippi Longstocking, cinnamon bun day, and escalating gang violence.

We examine the recent rise in gang-related crime in the country and what authorities are trying to do about it.

And historically, Black Friday has been a red-letter day for American retailers.

But piling into big box stores and wrestling over cut-price electronics seems even more unseemly this year.

We look at how the retail industry is coping in-store and online.

First up, though.

For here was a newly created free nation with the second largest population in the world.

It's more than 70 years since India gained independence from Britain

and became a democracy.

In that time, the country's democratic norms have come under strain.

In 1975, Indira Gandhi, perhaps the country's most powerful prime minister, was ruled to have cheated in an election.

In response, she plunged India into a 21-month period called the emergency, throwing opponents

in jail and ruling by decree.

Many perceive a similar threat to democracy in Narendra Modi, the prime minister since 2014.

As leader of the Bartia Jinta Party, or BJP, he's bullied critics, boycotted unfriendly media,

and relentlessly pushed a Hindu nationalist vision that's in deep conflict with the country's

secular roots. Democracy's rests on the institutions that keep powers dispersed, laws discharged, and justice dispensed.

But in India, those institutions are gradually becoming absorbed into Mr. Modi's plans.

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