So does Pakistan. So does Ethiopia for that matter.
I agree; the 5-10% of the population with actual buying power in India still amounts 55-110 million people, which is larger than the population of most European nations. I would argue that the same percentage of the population in Pakistan has similar buying power, but in Pakistan that only amounts to a couple million people making it a significantly smaller market.
And again, none of this changes the fact that the rest of the population lives in miserable, grinding poverty…lagging behind even Sub-Saharan Africa in many markers of basic development.
The question was why something like the Commonwealth Games are being hosted in India, not why India gets more international investment. I think you know as well as I do that niceties like hosting international games largely boil down to PR and appearances.
India, like many other developing nations, is plagued with dynastic politics, massive government corruption, miles of red tape at every level of the (incredibly backward and archaic) bureaucracy, and some of the most glaring economic discrepancies in the world. It has been widely criticized, both from within and without, for its mistreatment of minorities. It has also probably been dealing multiple, simultaneous armed separatist movements since its independence (a legacy of its creation from a hodgepodge of former British colonies in South Asia). Its democracy is admittedly far more stable than Pakistan’s or Bangladesh’s, but that’s not really saying very much at all. It’s still nowhere near being a “stable democracy.” That it manages to present itself as one is again, expert marketing.