That is fantasy. Information technology has created an unprecedented level of information asymmetry and the gap is widening everyday as the total computing capacity grows.
Before information era, the ruling class was roughly as blind as peasants. Population census took years, and sometimes outright impossible. The opaqueness was two-way. Now it's one way - people in power know everything about the citizens.
(hint: there already exist examples like such)
Without information, there is no way a voter may know which person to vote for and whether to believe in them at all and you are easily susceptible towards manipulation.
It will become more clear when you try to answer this hypothetical: if your objective were to bring in more democracy in North Korea, would you allow the global internet to proliferate if you could? According to your theory, it would just make it worse in general.
In 2025, we lost 22931 crores to cyber fraud - about 2.7 billion USD. People are now saying that they are relieved if the losses were only single digit crores lost.
India invented digital house arrests. There’s entire districts/cities where the primary revenue stream is from scams. Cops don’t want to involve themselves with cyber crimes because they can’t resolve them.
India’s information economy is so broken, that the idea that we are less or more democratic is not even relevant.
The amount of revenge porn, non-consensual intimate imagery released per day is heart wrenching.
I REALLY want to agree with you. I too want to talk about the good that tech can do. India cannot afford to talk about the good without dealing with the bad.
The motto of move fast and break things assumes someone else will pick up the pieces. This doesn’t hold true for India - we need to pick up the pieces.
I’ll ask you this: would India be better off without internet? If your ultimate goal were democracy, would you end internet to promote democracy in India?