“It has been said — and Chile, South Korea and Taiwan seemed to play into that narrative — that only autocracies could enable the painful process of opening up an economy to competition because democracies, with their conflicting demands and political divisions, tend to reverse free-market reform before it reaches a critical mass of people. India, with a 60-year-old democracy, throws cold water on that premise. But for many Indians, development is still an elusive goal. The country is socially stratified and millions of citizens, led by wily politicians, define their identity in religious or ethnic — i.e., collectivist — terms. This holds India back from catching up with modern liberal democracies in which rights are by and large based on the individual.”