Because India is close to the equator, the environment has a greater carrying capacity than the kinds of first-world, northern nations that the author is used to.

Thus, for this reason alone, India is likely to have a different ratio of people to development, since less development is required to sustain one person's resource utilization.

Contrast this to the US where much of the country is snow covered for 1/3 of the year and without planning and infrastructure to enable it, there would be very little food available during the winter. In the US the infrastructure is a requirement for even moderate population growth.

The same applies to shelter. In India, a hut made of newspaper is adequate shelter year round. Try that in the Northern US and you'll freeze.

The result of this is that there are more poor people who do not rely as much on large scale planning and infrastructure for their basic survival.

Yes India's government is corrupt, but not all that much more corrupt than the US government.

If you want to talk about rights for the poor, in India if someone isn't using land and you set up a tent on it and start living there, you can't be evicted. The shantytowns that the author found so disturbing are actually a side-effect of India's weak property rights laws, which themselves are a result of democratic pressure from the poor to continue living where their families have lived for generations. Contrast this to the genocide the US conducted against native Americans who were in the way.

Basic infrastructure (roads, sewers) is lacking in India, but those are not easy projects to bootstrap. Bangalore has a massive sewer construction project going on now.

Frankly, it's not all that bad. Sure the garbage smells bad, but it's mostly just a matter of learning not to keep inhaling after you catch a whiff of something rank on the breeze.

If you are concerned about India's political infrastructure, notice that India's rulers are forming alliances with the US to help thwart Pakistan's nuclear ambitions. Note that once the US has a stake in one ruling party it tends to do much to prop up and empower that party, even if there are horrible human rights consequences.

When I go to India I notice the energy. People sit happily beneath a dirty tarp in a roadside food stand, enjoying Manchurian Gobi... sometimes 4 or 5 people sharing one bowl of the delicious spicy food. Smiles everywhere. These are extremely poor people. Also I notice the tiny businesses, some retail locations are only a few square feet in size but sell a variety of goods and are staffed by a single motivated shopkeeper who works 18+ hour days.

India is full of hard working people and ingenuity. I found the author's generalizations about dishonesty, etc., quite offensive.

Consider how much effort is undertaken in the US to hide poverty from view. Sadly the US ends up putting a very large percentage of its poor population in prisons and has relocated many to horrific housing projects, where the violence and horrors are contained away from view.

Consider how much effort is undertaken in the US to present the appearance of legit, non-corrupt institutions. Yet fraud abounds at all levels of government. The stuff Wikileaks exposed about the US is nothing more than fraud, dishonesty, and corruption.