> People in India learned about computers from the West, but that doesn't make them somehow wrong for India... Can there be no growth or innovation
Democracy is consistent with "growth [and] innovation." If the Indian electorate finds certain western ideas to be positive innovations, it can adopt them democratically. Like computers--Indians adopted computers because they found computers to be a western advancement worth adopting. But voting is how you decide what's "innovation" versus what's "regression." How else would you possibly decide that?
> Rights are also a moral issue. There are people being harmed, who at the same time deserve to be free and live fulfilling, safe lives of their own choosing - not of your choosing (or mine).
You're articulating western morality that isn't widely accepted in Asia. "Choice" is a western fixation. Asians know that most individuals need society to help them make good choices. Western parents tell their kids to "follow their dreams." Asian parents tell their kids to "follow the proven track." Likewise, fixating on "harm" to the individual rather than harm to society as a whole is a western fixation. For example, westerners perceive Singapore's practice of caning those that cause public disorder as violating "human rights." But Singaporeans view it as an appropriate trade-off that protects the public's right to live in a clean, orderly, and safe environment.
"Democracy" is good, and widely supported in places like India, Bangladesh, etc. But it's antithetical to the concept of democracy to use it as a backdoor to smuggle in unrelated western moral philosophy.