Balaji Viswanath and Gated Community Patriotism

Recently on Quora I saw a rather old question regarding the failing infrastructure of India why the government is unable to do the required maintenance and upgrades to the bridges, roads or for that matter provide reliable electricty and water supply. Balaji Vishwanath's answer was something that quite puzzling. Now he is a very intelligent and accomplished individual. He has his own robotics company , a graduate of IIT and some elite institution in U.S which I forget. He claims to have inspired by the film Swades to have return to India in order to build and develop his motherland. The story seems a bit filmy for my taste but I am a rather cynical bastard I suppose compared to the easily sentimentally swayed Indian anyway. So it is not outside the realm of possibility. This of course has earned him legions of Indian fans and he is one of the most popular writers on Quora(may have been the most popular at one point). So this is not some random crank we are dealing with but articulate intelligent individual.

His response was something to this effect: Indian telecom have far superior data packages for customers compared to U.S. 

Now few people are more puzzled than me about the utterly absurd and frankly anti competitive and exploitative American and Canadian telecom industry. A brand new phone has to be tied to a cellular company and that entails a year or even two year contract. Apple, an utterly shameless and hypocritical organization often ties up with AT&T, one of the worse telecom companies in the world with regard to customer service and satisfaction. Why this doesnt come up more often in the right leaning and libertarian circles is a mystery to me. My own view is that most Americans are rather insular and either dont travel abroad that much or dont call internationally so they dont know what they are missing.

But the point is this Vishwanath fellow is essentially saying-

"never mind the 100s of millions of Indians have no access to clean reliable drinking water, electricity, have to endure terrible roads which clog up in the monsoons and heavy traffic as well as bridges which may collapse at any moment due to lax building regulations and corruptions. Check out how many YouTube videos you can watch for only 1000 Rs! That proves Indian superiority over Western infrastructure!"

I dont think he is quite foolish to not know that India is mostly in a pitiful state but he has trained himself to be blissfully unaware because he lives far far away from those troubles. Those in his circles , closed circles, appreciate these advantages that India provides over that of the West.  Those circles or rather gated communities hence end up living in a fantasy world where everything is fine. It is like that dog in the meme saying- this is fine because the fire hasnt consumed it yet.

Gated community patriots living in a country with highest number of slaves in the world

This was parodied even in 1999 film Mudhalvan where the villainous CM boasted that internet penetration is the highest in his state . To which the reporter countered -what use is internet when people most people dont have electricity or even food to eat?

It is remarkable that intelligent people who consider themselves patriots make such statements utterly oblivious to the poverty, filth and squalor all around them. This comprises not just majority of the online patriots who are generally a hopeless case but also ordinary educated and intelligent ( the two terms are not synonymous) people who should know better. They are like Gandhis three monkeys who see no filth or poverty. Hear no noise pollution . Speak nothing which is not complimentary. No need to I suppose, somewhere on Youtube ,some white girl thinks India is totally awesome so nothing to worry about I suppose.