Even assuming they do, and I doubt it, how do you explain the grinding poverty? You say it's because they're protectionist, but during our history as a nation until recently, mostly since NAFTA and the end of the cold war, so were we. Theodore Roosevelt campaigned on it.
Maybe part of India's problem is overpopulation. They have upwards of 700 million people. If we keep listening to the voices of the WSJ, we're going to have that many here soon, possibly by the end of the century. If we had eyes, we would see the danger of that prospect by looking at countries like India and China. Not everyone is employable, and those that aren't have to be taken care of by the state.
BTW, I didn't mean to imply Indian people aren't smart or resourceful, only that bad policies do have consequences.