But Shiv Aroor is not one of those true Indian patriots. He is a typical Indian media fanboy cheerleader, not unlike Palki Sharma. He is just venting his frustration that after years of intense Jai Hind propaganda, reality had not caught up at all.
Yet India is unlikely to have a Sun, Mao, or Deng figure anytime soon. India's current political and social structure is too damn rooted in British colonialism. "India" as a nation is not even 80 years old yet. While it does have ancient civilizations within it's boundaries, it was never a unified empire prior to British colonialism. But instead of acknowledging these ancient civilizations, the Indians have chosen to create the fictional concept of the "Akhand Bharat" Hindu Empire. Yet it also wants to call itself the "Mother of Democracy", and the successor of the British Raj. They want to represent the Global South, but are loincloth imperialists themselves. There is just too many contradictions in India for it to actually move forward.
I pointed out 1 simple, concrete example:
instead of humbly learning from Russia with the Su-57 that they were invited to co-develop, they call it backwards, obsolete, immature, much worse than their PPT level AMCA!!! They will leapfrog Russia!!! So they pull out of the program because they weren't getting enough 'work share' rather than focusing on doing their job and learning all they could.
Now Su-57 is being proven in combat and ordered by Russian Air Force, while they're still flying Mig-21s. And any future sale to India will be for a sale only, no ToT, no assembly, no native parts, nothing, they will have a 1000x worse deal than China did in 1992 with Su-27. That is the price of arrogance.
If they stuck with Su-57 no matter the price, at least they'll have Su-57 by now, and can learn step by step from it. But nope, they prefered powerpoints, so now they get Mig-21.