I'm just gonna humour the idea that this might be intentional, is there any reason to do it this way or is it just poor workmanship? The Qi Jiguang and Yimeng Shan that I went to look absolutely pristine, it's crazy, looked factory fresh
Its sort of normal. It is dependent of the spacing between the frames and how thick the plate is and it becomes more obvious with a ship's age as the stress of the sea on the hull take its toll.
Maybe on indian ships the plates are unusually thin and/or bad quality to keep costs down, though