I'm sure thoughts are influenced by the fact that the company I work for has a sizable presence there, but the very broad view I've developed is 'outsourcing superpower'. It rarely seems that India is the owner or originator of things, but they end up doing a massive amount in supporting companies from the USA during what is our night hours. They also seem to have an exceptional dedication to their work despite from what I've seen the managers being kinda over-the-top with the demands on them.

I used to work with a young woman who left one of the wealthy families there to get out of an arranged marriage who had all kinds of interesting tales on how things worked there. Talked a bit about their 'gold room's where they stored all their savings and if they needed extra cash would just shave off a piece from a brick.

I've no significant opinion of India beyond anti-Modi, and that's a product of John Oliver. Most of my engineering team are Indian and some I like, some I tolerate. And a fear of Indian traffic by reputation alone.

But you could swap "American" with "Indian" in that first paragraph, change nothing else, and it be largely (if not entirely) accurate.

Regional power with powerful neighbours, has nuclear weapons, struggles with impacts of climate change, (completely?) electrified railway recently, doesn't take a stance on the war in Ukraine due to involvement with Russia, farmer's protests, BJP/Modi won't step down, religious conflicts.

My country's media don't report much about India, but occasionally they do features about specific topics.

I love Indian culture and food, back in university I lived, studied and worked with quite a few Indian people and they all were kind, smart and very hospitable

I feel like quite large part of animosity towards Indian people (besides the usual racism) stems from the outsourcing of jobs there, especially with customer service, and even then going for the lowest offer

I've personally had both good and bad experiences with Indian customer service, but even with the bad experiences it's obvious that the problem is a lack of resources and not the worker

Unfortunately people are quick to blame the service worker instead of the organization, and this gives an acceptable excuse for their internalized racism

You said to not base the response on the people we know, but anything that I see from the news or read online doesn't reflect the people, it reflects the system

The only way to form an honest opinion of a group of people is to meet them, and even if all of those people somehow are the exception to the norm, they still represent and reflect their culture and where they come from

India appears to be a country that contains multitudes and is hard to pin down. It has a problematically large contingent that is deeply islamaphobic. The country suffers from low regulation and prejudice as well as a shitty right wing president. But much of it is beautiful with rich culture. The prominent religions are pretty benign when compared to american christianity as far as I can tell

I have never been to India and have no intention to travel there. My imagination is that it is overcrowded, the people there are mostly polite, hard working but not especially skilled. It is definitely a relatively poor country with a lot of inequality and crime.

I like Ram V and his comics, I don't like all the bhenchods calling my phone.

the "news" i "know" about india is little, some historical "facts" written mostly by uncivilized brutish invaders compacted to youtube videos by part or fulltime streamers. Some other "facts" which sound often bad i sometims mostly have from official media known to promote any "nice" propaganda - that is, depicting other countries worse than the own one so that people do not hunt their own gov with garden forks just to stop the crimes. Well i really "know" nothing about India.

But beeing proud of culture usually is a good thing, but that is only if it is culture and as such does not(!) base on abuse or similar.

Maybe what you experience could be a crowd effect that protects the people from seeing what they (group, society) do wrong while at the same time it protects the worst wrongdoers from punishment or at least from getting stopped. Such as it could be a self-sustaining downwards spiral taking more and more and everything down with it slowly increaaing pace. At least what you wrote sounded a slight bit chilling like that.

It could be hormones and how culture tells you to act or not act on them, or a lack of culture about such, maybe a combination of culture to "support your group" while that support does not always protect integrity of the overall concept of what that culture was meant for. A group of people cheering to each other how good they are might not want to stop cheering for "minor reasons" because it just feels good. While doing wrong things they could "help" each other (which is supposedly a good thing but can do lot of harm too) with arguments that this wrongdoing would be ok or even "good' in this specific moment because of <insert_bullshit_here>. alltogether spiralling downwards doing so more often every day. So all of them can go on wrongdoing while feeling well supported or even falsely feel superior in general.

however a figure (real/not real?) well known in india once said something like "it is better to calm down and just do your thing than to overreact". (this is the shortes version i've ever tried to compact it to but maybe you get the idea anyway).

I know for a fact that this is not true,

i don't know the underlying things that make it a fact, plz share.

India is a world leader when countries are ranked by population. It's time will come, as the middle class grows and imports from other nations increase, but that is not happening in the next 5 years in my opinion.

India's inability to remove the caste system leads IMHO to an equivalent of middle eastern country's inability to allow women a meaningful place in their society, and is a massive hindrance to reaching its potential socially and economically.

On the positive side, absolutely has the best cuisine in the world

I have nothing wrong with it, my parents are from off the mainland.