It completely depends on the nature, intentions and wisdom of the leadership.
On India, being socialist, yes in the official name. For practical purposes, it was(please note the past) controlled semi-capitalism, where the control was used to line up the politicians and bureaucrats pockets. - if you are an indian, you might recognize this term "license raj"
Thank god for capitalism, it ain't perfect, but its the best out there.
About the indication of the strengths of a communist form of governance, nope your example doesn't take into consideration certain very important factors working here. If you compare India and China - China had a head start of 20 years, when Deng Xiaoping opened up China to the West for setting up their factories, in the 70's. India started opening up only in early 90's under P.V. Narasimha Rao (and, to give due credit - Dr. Manmohan Singh the then Finance minister and current Prime Minister)
So, its more an example for 'its better to have wise leaders as early as possible' than 'communist form of government is better than non-communist governments'
my $0.0000002