AH! I haven't lost my post!...
Interesting that others have encountered instances of approval for British rule in India. I recall talking to a very old gentleman out there who had been a government clerk in the days of the Brits. I asked him if he thought times were better then, and he said he thought as much.
As I understand it,
corruption is the thing that frustrates people most about modern India. A Nepalese chap told be about his experience when he went over the border to India to learn how to drive a bus. At the training school he noticed that a fellow student was getting the bulk of the training time with the instructor, while he would get just a couple of minutes here and there. He asked the student why he was getting preferential treatment. The student explained that if you want to get proper training, you have to pay baksheesh... that is, pay the instructor a suitable 'tip'. He did so and thereafter he had no problems. No problems, that is, until after he qualified. One day he was out driving his bus full of passengers when, by mistake, he ran over an old woman and killed her. His colleagues told him he'd better scarper back to Nepal, and thus his driving career came to a sudden close. Mind you, there have been cases of families pushing an elderly relative in front of a passing bus, in order to claim damages from the bus company.
India's a chaotic place that somehow just about works! That's something you learn pretty quickly if you travel out there, independently. I might add, that nostalgia for the Brits vanished by the late-eighties. I recall going to see Attenborough's film
'Ghandi' in Bombay. The intermission was called immediately after the sequence showing the Amritsar Massacre. I had the doubtful pleasure of having countless eyes, bulging with indignation, leveled at me as people filed out to buy their sodas and popcorn. Since then, there have been countless Bollywood movies featuring the British Raj. They all portray the Brits as having been corrupt and shifty double-dealers. But then, that's the values of modern India for you.
(Call me 'jaundiced', but I did spend the equivalent of a year travelling around the place. There are many amazing and delightful things to see and experience in India too, I should add.)