What do Indian airports look like?

That's Bangalore airport. Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Chennai are also excellent. Public infrastructure in general has improved dramatically. Everything isn't there yet, but it's an ascending world society. Update your mental models accordingly.

the high ceilings at the new terminal are just wonderful…

Every airport in the world looks like that

What Old Delhi looks like.

Bengalore airport was very pleasant, way better than many others in North America

I have to say, my favourite airports (so far) are Indian airports. Especially the book stores are well sorted. I buy lots of business/science literature when there. If you look for good business/science books in an European airport (I did on a trip a few weeks ago), you’d be lucky to find a Geo magazine, but mostly you’ll be offered tabloits. If you take @RayDalio’s arguments about falling empires seriously, airport bookstores are the place I would go to measure what role education plays for a society.

As an Architect, I personally got super intrigued by they approach they had 'Terminal in a Garden'. The concept aimed to embrace sustainability and wellness, crafting an immersive passenger experience, seamlessly bridging their connection with nature from the instant they set foot in the terminal until they stepped onto the aircraft.

American malls circa 1990’s

The Mumbai airport is indeed beautiful

Landed here a week ago for a personal trip and shared a similar video on my WhatsApp group. The comments on it mirror what I saw on this post too and then it hit me - India’s infrastructure problems maybe solved very soon with some sensible governance. But it’s going to take sometime for the perception problem to be fixed. You showed a world class airport and people ( unfortunately Indians ) countered that by showing old Delhi streets , getting political or asking how the air smelt.