I don't know about India but that's probably not true in China. China was close to industrial revolution twice, once in the Song dynasty, once in the Ming dynasty (oil and natural gas application were documented), both disrupted by regime change from foreign invasions. Comparison with europe at the same time would suggest that the average Chinese enjoyed relatively better living conditions and intuitively would result in more expensive labor. It is unclear whether industrial revolution would start without the invasions, or were the falls of the dynasties inevitable, but the "cheap labor" theory is quite a bit off in quality in comparison to some other proposed theories, and even if present, could be a result of some other underlying cause than being the problem itself (which may seed a myriad of other problems that impede the progress).