I am fully of Indian descent, but my parents moved when I was young and I grew up as a teenager in Europe. English is the national language, because India was a british colony for 200 years, just like the US. But in practice, the spoken English is annoyingly bad. Written English is quite excellent in media.

The Indians have a envious supply of natural resources - 3/4 coastlines, 40% free hydro power, a large english speaking population with median age in 20s, world's biggest mountains protecting them from China. If India developed 50% wind + solar, like the UK did, they would be fully renewable, with hydro as the base load, negating all needs for battery storage. They have a shitload of minerals, just like China and Russia. Just not enough oil, but I feel that's partly because they have been held back by politics and activists.

They have diverse military training environments - desert in the west, Himalayas in the north, ocean all around, flat plains as well as rainforests. Its why the US and other countries like to hold joint trainings with India, because they can get a lot of use from the geography.

So why with all these gifts, is India a giant shithole ? Centralized power. Huge, incompetent, inefficient, corrupt buereacracy kills potential. Indians would have been far more prosperous if the country was split into a hundred smaller nations that would be more accountable to their people.