> India still has terrible public education, so it may take them longer to catch up.

India is a _very_ big country; as big as all of Europe, if not bigger. There are parts of India that are highly educated; in fact, the southern Indian state of Kerala has nearly 100% literacy. And corruption is plentiful there too.

India also has to dismantle the social systems and institutions set up by the British, which were designed to make people at the top rich, instead of running for the benefit of society.

Dismantling this is hard work, and you cannot simply destroy a bureaucracy without having a replacement ready (or chaos). WWII was good for Europe in some ways, because it massively destroyed the aristocracy and a lot of bureaucracy along with it. It was effectively a reboot of society, backed by a lot of cheap funding.

Yes, a lot of change cannot be done without massive upheaval - this is the dilemma we face in Africa.