Unpopular hot take: Kant's comment on too much democracy is a run-of-the-mill neoliberal musing on the difficulty of painful structural reforms in India. Invariably in a democracy, interest groups at receiving end of creative destruction would organize & lobby against such moves.

The compulsions of responding to street agitations, lobbied interest groups, & own financial self-interest make it difficult for politicians to push for policies that make for long-term productive improvement but are at odds with the self-interest of an organized group like

big business, labor union, teachers union, landowning farmers, PSU employees, etc. In thinking about Indian political economy, I keep going back to this paragraph by Pranab Bardhan, written in 1998 but as much relevant today.

Kant's comment should be seen as an inane technocratic remark on the functioning of interest groups in a democracy. If this remark had come from someone in the ruling regime, the kind of public outrage seen on twitter today would have been justified.

But then as @vinay_sitapati has pointed out, Hindu nationalist BJP loves to win elections & wants to consolidate a Hindu vote bloc which would allow them something akin to a stable electoral majority. So, it seems unlikely that they would complain against democracy anytime soon!