To answer your question, I feel India has NEVER had a civil discourse especially in matters political. It is not anything new. Let alone India, even the West, the supposed doyens of democracy have not had it. What you are witnessing in India is a section of young, professionally successful, strongly opinionated and very independent minded individuals who are challenging the ancien regime sociopolitical thought consensus. Similar phenomena is also being seen in the US and the West at large. So, in a way the discourse is much freer than it has ever been.
Earlier what would happen is a systematic denial of any space to anyone not subscribing to the old sociopolitical thought consensus. That left the space open to only a few who would lord over the masses and act as opinion creators and shapers for the masses. When every one in the group is just a version of yourself, there was little incentive for the sociopolitical discourse to be conflicting. But that changed with the oncoming of internet, social media and new regimes.
Simultaneously, as all of these are happening, what is also happening are those subscribers to the old sociopolitical thought regime getting increasingly nervous about them losing their erstwhile control and therefore, erecting new means to enforce their views by seeking to dismiss the thoughts of the new upstarts through disparaging them with epithets like alt-right, islamophobe, IT cell, WhatsApp university, et al. But they are not remotely as successful as before because of the democratizing effects of distribution given by the internet.
I am therefore, very optimistic, and an outlier in not considering the noisy cacophonous nature of discourses today as something necessarily bad. It is actually very good for our democracy and certainly free. It could be freer though as the James Damore Google episode or the recent firing of a fresher for sharing politically incorrect views online shows.
