Just gonna leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese_inventions_an...
Hopefully you'll realize that that is one of the more uninformed takes you've had, and then question the other things you think are true.
LOL. Pray tell… Are you going to elaborate on your theory of technology development, or are you just bloviating your biases?
HCL was the Indian IBM. In fact, it's a one letter shift from IBM, and one of the earlier Indian tech companies. There were opportunities. People wanted money and things and didn't want to wait.
India has some parts of the population in which that exists, but that's far from a large part of the population. Most people are very self interested, and you cannot blame them. People think of themselves. Why do you think there is a brain drain? People are educated at the government's expense at premier institutions and leave because they don't feel any sense of allegiance or civil responsibility to develop their country.
My math teach told me that during the Cold War, in the United States, the math that they learned was harder than it was now. It was your duty to become a scientist or engineer or something positive to push your country forward. That should be how it is for India, but aside from a smaller segment of the population (who are pretty loud and say some interesting things) people are more self interested. And you can't blame them. If your cousin moved to the United States and seems to be "living the life" why wouldn't you leave?
So a whole generation of scientists and engineers who were top notch educated at IIT at the government's expense under socialist India in the 80s basically left in the 90s and 00s because of more money, even though there were possibilities in India for them at the time (HP and IBM India, CDAC, CDOT, DRDO, ISRO, HAL, etc)
There are people in India who work super hard (which he really likes), but then there are people who are so selfish, driving on the sidewalk in the opposite direction, get upset because the ambulance is speeding to the hospital and refuse to move and block it intentionally, taking all kinds of shortcuts and opportunities to cheat each other instead of conducting business honestly, etc. No good treatment of women.
It's messy and it needs to get more organized to do anything meaningful in terms of R&D in that country.
They cannot make their own trainsets, cars, and consumer goods to fulfill local demand aside from food. India is on the road to privatizing many of its industries, but if you look that the list of GoI enterprises versus public private partnerships and the endemic levels of corruption (or else ethno-fascism) it is likely these are going to succeed anything soon. Indias largest exports are ideas and philosophies like religion, and I bet in the future it will be manufacturing and operating philosophy like Japan did with Kaizen.
India is a good place to go to offshore costs for space, and many countries do. They know how to squeeze the inefficiencies out of a process (and also not pay people, but that's another story) and bring down the costs of a mission. But there is nothing novel about the missions themselves. There is nothing pioneering, and there is nothing wrong with that. This is the case with Japan. Most of Japanese innovation is actually from US companies that they took over.
In any case, it's important to be realistic-- it's nothing to do with India being poor. They are not poor. They can afford a lot, and do a lot. Some people are in the mindset to accomplish a great deal mentally. Most people are not and still throw banana peels into the highway after eating them. No country without a basic civic sense can (in the immediate few years) have the R&D capabilities you speak of in a meaningful fashion.
Maybe in a few decades when people are more educated.