Democracy: in India and the US: Ask Pericles

The New York Times wrote this: "Democracy is built on the oft-tarnished ideal that any man or woman can get elected, but in India, home to the world’s biggest democracy, it helps to be part of a political family." So the ideal is the US, and the deformation is in India? And in India "it helps to be part of a political family" while in the US it does? Who writes and who edits those copies? Really, I would very much like to meet the foreign editor who go over those texts and don't notice how stupidly comical they sound. When I read that yesterday (I stack the issues of the New York Times and Economist and read them in binge sessions, weeks after the dates of issue), I remembered words of Pericles in that famous funeral oration that was reported by Thucydides: "It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while there exists equal justice to all and alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty an obstacle, but a man may benefit his country whatever the obscurity of his condition. There is no exclusiveness in our public life..." Does that apply to American democracy?