While European states invested in building up their human capital over the past 200 years, most of the Indian economy was turned into an extractive colonial state. The lack of investment set the country back by a lot. After Independence, it turned its back sharply on Capitalism (rightfully so, having suffered under extreme capitalism for a couple of hundred years). Unfortunately, that didn’t end up working very well either, since it lacked the strong Institutions and State Power required to succeed that way. Politically, Partition of the Country destroyed existing economic structures and trade routes that had existed for hundreds of years, setting back all countries in the subcontinent even further… and then you also had multiple wars.

Honestly its quite amazing that the subcontinent has remained as stable as it is today; it could very easily have descended into the carnage we see today in Myanmar.

> the open landfill that it is now?

I’m going to guess you’ve only visited India's cities?

Most of Western cities were open landfills till a few decades ago despite advantages reaped from colonialism.

India still has some negative momentum from nearly 300 years of European colonialism. 700 years of Islamic occupation that destroyed native universities like Nalanada didn’t help.

It was amazing to see the blue sky coming out in Asian cities during covid. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52313972

Above comment is accurate. All Indian indigenous systems were destroyed (education, governance, taxation etc) during the 1000 years of foreign occupation. India still operates under the oppressive system imposed by the colonizers to subjugate the population. The shock and ripple effects of the plunder, destruction and subsequent partition has crippled the subcontinent. It might take several centuries to rebuild and recover.

Probably not one thing but the sequence of Islamic colonialism, followed by European colonialism, followed the splitting of India, the introduction of consumerist lifestyles (plastic crap), globalism, etc.

I imagine any society where the existing stable system is violently destroyed will have issues with people not having their original culture and way of life, but also they probably had to just survive, and didn’t have time for environmental concerns.

Right after the Islamic and British invasions