The explanation seems superficial: “Because the state makes it impossible not to be.”
That suggests we could get Indians to become rule followers by having some McKinsey folks come over and write different rules. I’d put that into the same bucket of willful denial of reality as the folks who thought you could make Iraq and Afghanistan into democracies by giving them different rules and laws.
This is unfortunate, because the underlying issue is extremely important. Getting to the bottom of it would change billions of people’s lives for the better.