My partner comes from a country with a dictatorship so I see first hand how bad it is to live in an environment where the de facto ruler has full say on everything. You can and will be killed as per their request.
Democracies are bad and the US, India, Europe are all struggling with them, but there are essential for basic rights. Without politicising this thread, one can look at some of the other countries and see how bad life would be in a dictatorship.
Currently dictatorship's are not THAT bad, but that's because they are still competing with democracies. Imagine the whole world under one ruler - they would likely kill large parts of the population. Just as one good ruler can do many good things fast, one bad ruler can do many bad things fast.
India is not really in that category since they've been a democracy for a while, but still not long enough to be ingrained in their psyche. They have ethnical and other social issues that few other countries have (at least when it comes to scale).
While authoritarianism is organized in the short run, but collapse in the long run as no one person lives forever.
There are 1000s of problems in India, but democracy is not one.
There were widespread allegations that the EVM machines were rigged.
https://twitter.com/bhupenderc19/status/1356910861848305664?...
Wouldn't be surprised if you are part of the 80%.
As an indian, I am still optimistic. As these farm protests shows, our democracy still has life despite a government that has scant regard for it.
Despite the hiccups in the past (dismissing of an elected communist government in a state and a short emergency that suspended elections and most democratic rights), democracy has thrived till the last 6 years.
What this government has done is exposed all the huge shortcomings in our democratic institutions that has allowed it to control and dominate it, thus weakening our democracy. As long as we don't allow the current party in power to totally subjugate our democracy (like Hitler did with Germany), we can still repair our democracy.
(As the right-wing in power in US and India showed, democracy in the US is more resilient than India's because the democratic institutions of the US were stronger. This is where India needs to focus. Also note that one of the propaganda of the party in power is to show that democracy is totally dysfunctional in India, because that is the only way they can find support to change the constitution to "fix" it.)