>They don't have the world's best food

Strongly disagree. We really do. But yeah I generally agree with your post.

We might have world class food (thanks to FCI's rathouses) but for sure that ain't reaching 600 million. The logic runs thus, they've got no place to shit, so why they need food.

Hat's off to those who stay back in this crazy country and strive hard to lift this sunken ship, and for sure the ISRO folks are among them.

Thank you! I'd think India has one of the most diverse range of cuisines in the world, much of which is lip-smacking good!

Maybe not the best, but pretty close ... in my visit to India, i totally loved the food. One of the vastes cuisines both in taste and quantity !

Most of it burns twice ;)

> How many countries achieve this after having these many "core" problems.

It is a great feat! It's confusing to me how India can plan something like this, but cannot fix the problem of buying train tickets. I've heard that the queues can be quite long.

But it is exciting to see India sending things into space.

If you meant buying online, the problem was solved long back.. https://www.irctc.co.in/

Believe me the website works and is used by millions..

Queues still remain long due to lack of computer literacy and reach of internet..

While they are doing a better job on this, it still crashes @ 10am daily - right around the emergency quota for the day starts. They also need daily maintenance for an hour or so.

And not to mention it is India's largest ecommerce site :)

Its not exactly that Western nations don't have problems they ignore or are not called out on. Its just easier for people to take cheap shots at India, stereotypes and such being what they are.

I don't think their political corruption is much worse than what the US has, we just have laws that permit too much of it. Fortunately the scientist of most countries want to succeed because of their interest in the unknown, in doing things, rather than worrying about politics.

From travelling across India for a few months (also among the "backwards" populations, as they are referred to even in Indian legal texts), I can tell you that yes, corruption is amazingly prevalent. As far as money exchanged, you might be right (I don't know), but the way it affects day to day life is nothing like in western countries. It's a credit to the resilience of people there that they can function on top of that structure and still be enthusiastic about "India" - over a dozen fairly geographically homogenous languages, with most people never travelling outside their cultural comfort zone.