[wisty]

Maybe it's not really dictatorship vs democracy.

India has an English democracy. Everything in India was originally designed to support a wealthy English middle-class (if it was important directly from the UK), or to extract wealth from poor Indians so it could be exported to the UK.

I'm saying, India's institutions are overbuilt. They were originally designed to work in a far richer, and far more orderly country. There are certainly some things which are "one size fits all", but for anything which is only appropriate with a large, law abiding middle class it fails horribly in India.

[seanmcdirmid]

This is a good point. But I would wonder: what kind of democracy/government would be appropriate for a developing country? It should somehow promote stability and development, and perhaps not focus so much on liberty and freedom. This realization makes me a bit uncomfortable as an American living in China.