Indians such as myself are well aware of the reality of Indian work culture and business ethics. Indian corporations take tax evasion, environmental negligence, and worker abuse to an extreme far beyond what the US or any other developed country has to deal with. It is certainly improving for several reasons - a burgeoning startup environment, environmental awareness, better education - but I hardly find it racist to point it out.

This: replace indian with chinese or any other country where the quality of life, pay, and opportunities are not as great as in the destination countries and you have the main reason, a large pool of desperate people and managers/directors trying to "improve" their bottom line. Pay everyone the same across the board! Why pay programmers of equal value differently for the exact same work? FAANG companies do this within the US across various regions. How about fixing that first.

For the same orange juice, you pay a premium price at wholefoods, don't you? There is nothing alike here. Your pay depends on your skill and your ability to sell yourself.

Just taking the parent comment at face value, does it really qualify as racist / slur?

Yes, it invoked a country and a race, followed by unflattering statements. Are those statements factual? Unfair generalisations or politically incorrect?

I'm leaning towards it being politically incorrect.

It's just repeating a tired stereotype. India is becoming a less corrupt country over time as institutional arrangements (not "culture" which is irrelevant to the issue) improve. It's already less corrupt than many of its neighbors.

Saying that certain Indian companies do things is fine; it becomes an unfair generalization when you try to to extrapolate that to being because of their country's culture to be dishonest.

Stereotypes based on half-truths aren't necessarily rascist

Internet discourse based on them quickly sinks to the bottom of the barrel.