This is just a small observation that I remember and I wonder if it what you are talking about.
But as expat who lived in PRC and been to India, I know what you mean. Every country, especially larger ones will have enough elites and market for high quality services. Sometimes there's even premium vs west, i.e. PRC in the 90s, you want best western stuff, chances are there's big tariff or extra transaction fees from smuggling. Services especially, experts/expats who offer their rare skills in developing countries will charge premium if anything. And somethings you simply can't get, i.e. wealthy South East Asians going to Singapore for top tier private medical treatment because they don't have enough rich elites to support a tier1 private hospital at home. I know Canadian (with universal coverage) diasphora who wanted to retire like king in SEA but realized they need a few 100k sitting around in case of medical crisis. Then more country develops the more market for high quality goods/services and price start coming down due to more competition addressing the market. Like there's tier3 Chinese cities where you can live like king and still have decent access to high quality goods and services.
This is what happens when economic development selects quantity over quality. And IMO it's the right choice, especially for large countries. Nevermind not being able to pay for for quality in the first place (lack of qualified skill), when you're at the bottom of the ladder it's long term better to trade safety/lives for more/faster progress. The aggregate societal and human gains that can be afforded from growing income almost always trumps loss from chabuduo. Especially for large countries like India and PRC with so much (bluntly) disposable bodies, you want to throw everyone into the mixer because with that many bodies, it's important to seperate wheat from chaff in terms of human capita as soon as possible and harness them - otherwise potential gets squandered on massive scale. It's not just construction. It's important to manufacture lots of things because even if you make lots of shit, you'll also discover the great makers who makes things that are internationally competitive. Or spam lots of academic papers, because even if most of is hack fraud, it's also maximizing for gems that raise ceiling on top end. Countries grow by learning and improving via doing a lot, even if most of it is not good.