There is nothing special about democracy. It is just a political system that worked in extremely homogeneous western society. This system is a Western design for western needs.
When this democratic model is copy pasted in other non western countries this model becomes extremely inefficient and most of the time self destructive.
Okay, so what kind of political system do you want here? India is far too diverse and any other system but a democracy where the interests of each state (which broadly represents the individuals of communities that speak a particular language) can always be represented and taken seriously. You talk about democracy working in homogeneous Western countries but why is it that so many dictatorships have persecuted or genocided ethnic groups that are either minorities or form plurality? There are plenty of regimes like that. The neighbouring Myanmar is a Bamar supremacist regime and is well documented to have been the one to genocide the Rohingyas while strongarming the Aung San Suu Kyi's government to not take action against the military leaders who orchestrated it and went on to form the current junta, the Afghan Taliban openly treats the former Northern Alliance composed of Tajiks and Hazaras as second class citizens, the Pakis murder Baloch and Ahmediya with impunity and have imposed Urdu as the national language, the CCP has imposed Mandarin on the Mongolians, Tibetans, Turks and ethnic Koreans, I could literally keep going on.
There is no guarantee that an Indian dictator with unprecedented power wouldn't do the same. Like it or not, democracy allows the steam built from all the ethnic and religious tensions to be expressed relatively calmly but in almost all autocracies, there is no way for the steam to escape with the walls of repression. It will build and build until one day it will explode and collapse the whole country.
This simple democracy vs Dictatorship debate doesn't really explore various differences between authoritarian states. How can one combine religious theocratic Dictatorship like Iran and an atheist communist dictatorship like Cuba in one group? What about monarchy systems? As per western propaganda a prince in a historical monarchy is just as bad and oppressive as some genocidal warlord in Sudan.
The differences between authoritarian states have been explored. There is a reason everybody refers to the Arab kingdoms as oil monarchies, the former communist bloc as the second world and countries like South Korea and Singapore as benevolent dictatorships in the past. There are a lot of research papers on this topic. Stop making Strawman arguments to claim that this is all some western propaganda. All you need to do is look this up on Google Scholar.
One size doesn't and cannot fit all. There is a need for various types of political systems across the world that fulfills aspirations of people.
This is why a democracy isn't a monolithic unit. The constitution of India is fundamentally different from the constitution of the US, UK, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel or any other country even if inspiration had been taken from some of these countries while framing our constitution. The fact that we have about 106 amendments in the Constitution is a further indication that we are actively trying to make sure that the constitution reflects the nature of the Indian society and to realise the aspirations we have as a people.
One size doesn't and cannot fit all. There is a need for various types of political systems across the world that fulfills aspirations of people. For every poor and failed dictatorship there is equal number of poor and failed democracies.
Yeah, I need a source for that bullshit claim. For the sake of argument, even if it were true, all you'd be saying here is that a dictatorship isn't necessarily any better or any worse than a democracy.
Democracy isn't a guarantor of prosperity, it is a guarantor of freedom. This is a requirement in an advanced phase of society where basic needs are already taken care of. In an impoverished society freedom is not sought after but basic necessities are more important and whoever provides it or promises to provide it becomes a favorite of the people regardless of his/her democratic credentials.
Freedom is not sought after? I think you need to read the history of the Indian independence movement. Just a little spoiler alert though, the need for individual freedom was a pretty big thing.
There are also 'n' number of autocracies in this world which cannot provide the people with their basic necessities. I would rather be in a shithole where I'd have at least some rights even if I were likely to be malnourished or starving than be in a shithole that has no respect for an individual and then starve all the same.