With all due respect, there is no reason that folks in India will not learn the same stuff the author learnt. They would (and probably are) on hacker news - learning the same subset of things.
And, they live in a country where $2 still buys you a decent meal. I don't see why they wont be able to do a good job, for less.
You are making a good point. I'm from a third-world country, and I'll tell you why: they shouldn't be developers in the first place.
1. Communication: They fail to communicate not because English is not their native language. They'll also fail in their native language. Communication is a skill. English is a language. They don't invest to learn good communication, and also to learn the language.
2. Coding: They are bad coders. They don't produce good code because they don't want to learn version control, unit testing, and programming patterns. They are too lazy to open up a book and read. They are too lazy to subscribe to programming blogs and listen to podcast. They think that what they learnt in school and university is more than enough.
3. Creativity: Briefly, they can't look beyond their room window. They don't bother to know if the UX is good enough or the kind of audience for their product. They don't want to create. They prefer to copy/paste.
This is not India. This is most of the "developing" world, a also a part of the "developed" world.
Something that's become increasingly clear to me as a developer is that good code is only a small part of the puzzle - by far the most important factor is communication.
It's difficult enough to determine exactly what it is a client is really asking for as a native English speaker sitting in the same room.
Add in a language barrier, time-zone barrier, remote communications barrier and a cultural barrier and it becomes increasingly difficult for any non-trivial project to succeed.
Outsourcing seems to be most successful if you can very clearly define a specification or systematize the work, have enough knowledge to review the quality of the work that comes back and have plenty of time to micro-manage the project.
And, they live in a country where $2 still buys you a decent meal. I don't see why they wont be able to do a good job, for less.