As a matter of fact I have. It was a long time ago, in 1980 I visited Cochin. The conditions there was as you describe them.
Since then India has been undergoing a massive transformation,(led mostly by technology) but with a long way to go.
With a middle class of approximately 50 million and expected to increase ten fold by 2050, they will eventually become bigger consumers than the US.
The country does not have adequate fossil fuel resources to meet it's energy demands, hence the need to buy coal from Australia. In August of this year they had an energy crisis when 300 million people were left without power.
Renewable energy fits well with their strategy to grow their economy and become a world technology powerhouse. If they can reduce the amount of coal and oil they buy, then their prospects for building wealth increase immeasurably.
They buy our coal now, because they have no other choice. Long term they would like nothing more than to be less reliant on other countries for their energy needs.
Both China and India cannot magically find fossil fuel energy resources within their own countries but they have the technology to build devices that produce renewable energy.
