>Who cares whether india is a democracy or not?
Anybody who wants to do business. Democracies have stable, predictable rule of law. Do you want to invest in a country where a dictator could simply decide that he is going take your assets?
Anybody who wants to do business. Democracies have stable, predictable rule of law. Do you want to invest in a country where a dictator could simply decide that he is going take your assets?
Really? Russia? Venezuela? They are democracies. Also, do you realize that many of the world's poorest and unstable countries are democracies? India has been a democracy for nearly 80 years. Nobody wants to do business with them. Everyone wants to do business with china. Go figure.
> Do you want to invest in a country where a dictator could simply decide that he is going take your assets?
You mean like how britain, EU, etc are taking russia's assets? Or how we stole japanese american assets during ww2? Or mexican american assets in the 1930s. Or the native american's lands since the very beginning?
There's nothing inherently good, stable or lawful about democracies. If you didn't have blinders on, you'd be shocked at how terrible democracies have been. The country with the most poverty in the world is a democracy - india. The countries that have waged the most wars around the world in the past 20 years have been democracies - US, Russia, EU, etc. The countries that have committed the greatest genocides have been democracies.
What a nation needs is competent leaders, not democracies. Instead of blinding accepting propaganda, just look at the reality.
Isn't that the fault of democracy then? How can democracy be so great if it can't even help develop basic civil society? So now you are moving the goalpost from political government to civil society? So it's civil society that's important not democracy?
> I'd much rather be in one of those flawed democracies than, say, in North Korea. '
And most people would rather live in china or vietnam than many of those flawed democracies.
> Democracy, liberal/bourgeois values, civil society, proper rewards for merit...
That's not what honest look at political history shows. We're told hitler was the worst thing in history and democracy gave us hitler.
> All of these things ultimately foster competence.
I'd say it fosters corruption rather than competence. And everyone from the founding fathers to the ancient greeks would have agreed.
There are merits to all forms of governance. Nothing magical about democracy as I've shown. What you need is competence. Doesn't matter the form of government.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
Last I know all major nations and big corporations of the world are queuing up to invest in India.
The grandparent’s point was that Russia is technically a democracy and look how it’s doing. If there’s enough corruption is it really still a democracy? And if it isn’t, why does it matter if India is a paper democracy or not when considering whether it needs our support.