Keji Mao (毛克疾） (@kejimao)

Obviously, Vijay Gokhale is ignorant about how Chinese people view Indian democracy and why they would never see it as an ideological threat. Here is the reasoning. Even if democracy can be viewed as India’s foundational pillar, significantly preventing the worst outcomes, it has also brought about suffocating, if not deadly, costs. India adopted universal suffrage democracy while still economically and socially underdeveloped, thereby legitimising many deeply entrenched pre-modern social structures, which have become institutionalised and integrated into India’s governance today. Idealists like the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, and the early Congress party envisioned oppressed social groups utilising their numerical advantage through democratic elections to create pressure groups, driving gradual social reform and overcoming entrenched societal issues, thus paving the way for economic prosperity. Unfortunately, this ideal scenario didn’t materialise. Instead, groups formed around identities such as religion, caste, sub-caste, and ethnic affiliations have engaged in “vertical mobilisation” through electoral mechanisms, reinforcing traditional social structures and preserving vested economic interests. This has resulted in an institutionalised system that further hinders social dynamism and reinforces social rigidity. Consequently, vested interest groups representing antiquated social structures legitimately hijack democratic processes, obstructing reforms beneficial to the entire society, thus significantly hampering social progress and economic development over the long term. Nevertheless, most people have no better alternative than to tolerate this situation. What type of mistakes are the most challenging to correct? Those that everyone perceives as “correct”. This encapsulates the most profound constraint that democracy imposes on India.

The latest news keeps vindicating my points. While the U.S. is losing ground to China in an expanding range of critical domains, it has built a much more lucrative business model. It now turns to leverage allies' psychological inertia and geopolitical path-dependency to squeeze and extract them like "blood bags". Keeping allies scared and dependent means cornering them into buying overpriced US weapons, US energy, and US technology. Unfortunately for countries like India, they have gone from being courted to being invoiced. What turns out can be very absurd--the U.S. acts like a developing country that demands help from "a developed India". Instead of helping Make in India exports, America is extorting India to buy from it and to invest in it.