That's both a little harsh and doesn't stand up to scrunity. As a counterexample, consider Singapore, which also has inherited and retained the British education & legal systems, as well as standardized on English as the lingua franca despite it being nobody's mother tongue. Yet Singapore has still become one of the world's richest countries, while Malaysia next door, starting from almost the same position (they were part of the same colony/country!), has not.
My equally unpopular opinion is that Gandhi's ruinous Swaraj/socialist economies theories that basically involved blocking off imports and central planning of everything were the primary cause India stagnated for so many decades, and has now fallen so far behind China in everything except exporting brainy IT engineers to work in the US.
Nonsense. Russian(Ex-USSR), China are more extreme in central planning and inward focus than India will ever be.
The real problem is insatiable desire among Indians for Managerial/Administrative jobs. Or Govt bribe income potential jobs(Again in Administration). Most people want to be in abstract boss level administrative/managerial jobs because they think they can just give orders and make 10x more money than people who do 10x work to make things happen and make 0.1x money.
Indians do well in administration/management because it's the most aspirational job here. Lastly India is a country of shopkeepers and resellers. We are NOT an engineering or industrialization intensive country.
There is a fundamental cultural problem and that is unlikely to be solved soon given the misaligned incentives.
My equally unpopular opinion is that Gandhi's ruinous Swaraj/socialist economies theories that basically involved blocking off imports and central planning of everything were the primary cause India stagnated for so many decades, and has now fallen so far behind China in everything except exporting brainy IT engineers to work in the US.