[My use of the term leading luminaries was meant to be interpreted sarcastically not literally.]
You are a victim of the anglophone Indian elites greatest modern achievement, fooling the West that India is somehow brimming with talent. India is more or less a democracy in all the major areas where Washington deems democratic legitimacy lies and democracies get the governments people want/deserve. Unlike China, where the Communist Party seized power at gun point aided by Soviet/Comintern support and taking advantage of a nation exhausted by 8 years of war with Japan, Indians got a government more or less peaceably elected by Indians that keeps on being elected by Indians to this day.
Average IQ’s in India are lower than Malaysia. The PISA test administered to 15 year olds is not a subject matter (i.e. no asking about particulate dates or facts) but rather evaluates logic and higher order thinking and is the closest thing to a universal globally applicable IQ test. Indian scores when they took it, and promptly decided to not take again, were mediocre and ended up 2nd to last (72-73 out of 74).
Now keep in mind that most of the participating countries were OECD countries and thus, not Sh*tholes, so all of black Africa and most of the middle east weren’t represented but the only country India managed to edge out of the participants was Kyrgyzstan.
Indian student scores on reading comprehension, arithmetic, and science topped out in the 350’s range. This was significantly lower than Malaysia which managed a respectable 410 and more in line with some of the poorer countries of Latin America. Keep in mind that the base line score is a 500 which is standardized around a White European student from the post-industrial West.
What most superficial observers of India do not understand is that it is the ur-multicultural / multiracial civilization and that two thousand years of religiously sanctified caste endogamy has shattered the society of India into a myriad of competing micro races, which is why India along side South Africa and Latin America stands as one of the most unequal places on earth. Extrapolating Indian performance from the miniscule socio-economic elite jati networks that finds their way to the West is a fool’s game that Indian’s aren’t particularly interested in disabusing any time soon.