I am sure the author didn’t purposely exclude India. Nonetheless as you post it is an illiberal democracy (hopefully) slowly progressing to something better.

It isn’t a great example for the purposes of the articles for two reasons.

One is it isn’t the type of democracy a country should aspire to as it isn’t liberal.

Secondly it doesn’t have The Buddhist/Confucian/Tao/Shinto cultural background of the countries the author is focusing on and is therefore just as alien as western democracy in terms of cultural connections.

I certainly hope India becomes a good example of democracy over the next two decades as someone needs to keep China from becoming an empire.