The names of some of the non-democratic and notorious dictators that stand out are often associated with communist regimes: Think Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin.
They claimed to pursue equality by redistributing wealth. In practice, they delivered poverty on an equal scale.
They targeted religious faiths, wealthy individuals, big business, and certain interest groups in the absolute without applying any mechanism to discern, blaming them for all social inequality, and systematically suppressed or eliminated them. They believed that the power must be in the hands of the people.
The result was catastrophic. Faith and moral codes were weakened. God was killed and sin got a free run.
Over 10 crore citizens were killed, with most damage in Cambodia, China, and the Soviet Union. As expected, economies of these nations collapsed into free fall.
And so the case for democracy.
However, the long-term effectiveness of democracy in delivering public goods is open to question.
Did these dictators fail because they were non-democrats or because they hated God, knowledge gurus, and wealth creators?
The People's Republic of China is not a liberal democracy. Under Xi Jinping's leadership, the state maintains strict control over foreign media, promotes a market-oriented economy, and seeks to rejuvenate traditional Chinese civilization. A key policy objective is also the sinicization of foreign religions to ensure they conform to the local and cultural norms. The results are for anyone with an open mind to appreciate.
America was accidentally discovered by Europeans. Its earliest settlers got a lot of land and resources with zero competition and very little resistance. The simple indigenous tribes of the land were almost wipped out by the new inhabitants. Being a clean slate with no legacy, it became the world's first nation that was formed without a king. It built the nation ground up, using slaves from Africa.
Later, by another accident of geography, it escaped the evils of the world wars as not a single bomb fell on it, but did benefit from it as a supplier of arms and ammunition to the warring factions. It did drop the Atom bomb to prove and declare itself as the undisputed master of the world. It began to dictate the fate of other nations through alliances or sanctions.
America believes that democracy must prevail across the world.
However, America itself became what it did, on a model of gradually evolving and controlled democracy over 170 plus years. Unfortunately, India, even when not ripe, became a full fledged democracy soon after getting its independence. That allowed all adult citizens to vote, including "all women," a decade before all Americans did.
While we are very much of a democracy, frankly, even today, America is not. It runs on a two-party "regime," with huge overlaps, which it calls democracy. And it declares itself as a model for success.
I think it simply has a higher standard of living, not life. It suffers from broken families, homelessness, high debt, crime, gun violence, deep racism, substance abuse, addiction, polarization, mental health issues, etc.
But the world believes and accept what the Americans preach because of its economic and military might. It is America that decides what is good, bad, or mad.
Everything is subject to interpretation. The interpretation that prevails at any given time is not a function of truth but power - Friedrich Nietzsche.
Only democracy serves, is just a childhood indoctrination spread through the American hard and soft power, a constant self-serving narrative building exercise.
Many of us began with the conviction that democracy is the best form of government, only to later settle on the more pragmatic view that it is merely the least undesirable.
Today I feel that compared with a benevolent dictator, democracy is appearing inferior. Yet it retains one crucial advantage: when no benevolent ruler emerges, citizens can at least remove a bad one through the ballot.
The difficulty, however, is that while we can't locate the good, the genuinely malevolent rulers do come to power; ironically through democracy.
History offers several examples. Once in office, such leaders often learn how to manipulate institutions from within and extend their power well beyond the limits that democracy was meant to impose.
Think Hitler, who was angry with the reparation costs imposed on Germany, as according to him, Germany did not lose the first World War, but was manipulated from outside and betrayed from within by domestic revolutionaries and the Jews.
So, democracy is ineffective in keeping dictators at bay.
This raises an uncomfortable question: is a dictator always necessarily worse than a flawed democratic order?
Leaders are often branded as tyrants by powerful foreign democracies, and by their media systems that pick up some inevitable frictions or lapses as spoken by rivals or opposition within a foreign country and then use that to amplify the problem.
Media was supposedly created to keep power within its home country honest through truthful reporting and not an overreaching commentary on other countries' matters.
Political reputation, in other words, is rarely neutral.
History also shows that public perception of leaders is deeply contested.
Muammar Gaddafi was, for many, as beloved to his people as Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan is to Emiratis, or Putin is to many Russians.
Each of these leaders pursued welfare-oriented policies in his own way. Iran too complicates simple categories: it is not a straightforward dictatorship, and its democratically elected political leadership has long been viewed differently by Iranians and by the United States.
The Shah, for example, was detested by many Iranians but admired by America.
The deeper problem is that humanity has not yet perfected the art of self-government.
Compared with the great empires of ancient Bharat, modern democracy has often produced only limited pockets of welfare-state success. This is especially striking in an era when territorial disputes are largely settled, yet many leaders still struggle to survive even a second term. Some, facing likely defeat, are tempted to weaken the electoral process itself rather than accept a rightful exit.
Today’s conflicts are no longer mainly about land. They are about markets, resources, and influence.
That makes external intervention a persistent feature of political life, often aimed at weakening a nation’s standing in global trade and commerce. In such a world, political freedom without economic strength can leave a country vulnerable.
For this reason, I believe a nation should first attain at least middle-income economic strength before being granted full democratic freedom. Economic maturity gives society the resilience needed to resist narratives that undermine its people and its leadership.
In India’s case, our tragedy has been to expand democratic freedoms before building durable economic foundations. The result is that voters are too often offered short-term handouts instead of governance that breaks dependence on election-time doles.
Once economic strength is secure, a gradual transition to a more disciplined political model, such as a single-party democracy like Singapore’s, may be worth considering.
Even then, the public must retain the power to remove the top leader at the end of a term if performance is poor.
Alternatively, a party-state system in which elections occur within the party rather than directly among the public may work, provided it is guided by Dharmic principles.
Why should such a model be taken seriously? Because human beings are naturally drawn toward adharma when self-awareness weakens, imagination runs unchecked, memory fades, conscience slackens, and willpower fails.
Governance, therefore, cannot rely on idealism alone. It needs modeled restraint, institutional discipline, and a clear sense of duty towards the state and the subjects.
That is why the equivalent of Chanakya–Maurya model deserves revival, one where a Brahmin-led moral counsel could serve as a reminder to the mightiest Kshatriya rulers, that to rule the world, one must first serve it. Here God is not the enemy of the state but solace for anyone when misfortune strikes.
Only a civilization as ancient as Bharat and a country as young as India, rooted in its past and committed to its future, can attempt such a long-term project with seriousness.
If it succeeds, India need not merely govern itself well; it can become an example for the world to follow.
