Also, modern day India has a very strong government intervention bias, especially regarding lifting people out of poverty. Be it investments in infrastructure (such as running water), or downright giving food to people. Good luck explaining how that isn't "socialism" to an American.
You mean Kerala, not Karnataka.
And conversely, West Bengal was ruled by the Communists since the 1970s to the early 2010s, yet it's developmental indicators have regressed to those comparable to some of the poorest states of India.
Conversely, right leaning and nativist Himachal Pradesh (if you ain't Pahadi or Pahadi-adjacent we will give you the cold shoulder, and both the state chapters of the HP INC and BJP trace their origins to the RSS and Arya Samaj) has developmental indicators that can match Kerala and other traditionally richer states in India.
At the end of the day, all that matters is administrative capacity, not ideology.
If local government is held accountable, it will work hard to deliver.
I moved from the UK to Germany, I actively decided against the USA. Why? Consider what was going on politically in the US right after the UK voted for Brexit.
Σκεφτόμουν την Κύπρο, αλλά οι Άγγλοι λένε όταν κάτι είναι δύσκολο να διαβαστεί: "It's all greek to me"
Are you sure you know what you're talking about?
First, no, we have some high-visibility examples of dictators claiming to be socialists, several of whom had purges of other internal opponents who said socialism was a different thing to what they were doing.
We don't point to the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea"* or "The Democratic Republic of Congo" then say of Democracy (or of republics) "And we know how it always ends".
Second, there's a huge gap between what the USA considers "dangerously lefty" and what is seen in northern Europe today, let alone states today which are or were explicitly socialist such as the USSR.
* AKA North Korea, AKA Naughty Korea