Socialism is an economic system; democracy is a system of governance. India is a socialist democracy. It is not communist but it also not a liberal democracy à la Fukuyama et al.
Nonetheless, the enduring problems of corruption and mismanagement in its administration remain. Those can't be attributed to the old socialism or current capitalism alone, considering that India is going through a rapid economic rise out of relative poverty. Bad governance is bad governance, whatever the system, and it's aggravated when countries are poor, have a weak rule of law, and are just starting the climb up the ladder of development.
India has a few sectors, like IT, that are fairly unregulated and which are growing very quickly but the vast bulk of the economy isn't like that.
I certainly agree that good government is very important, though. The better the government the less government intervention in the economy hurts growth, and the more it tends to actually help disadvantaged people.
Except throughout the Cold War, the socialist states looked more like other socialist states (to wit: The USSR, the PRC, clients thereof, and non-aligned socialist states like Albania) than like non-socialist states around them. These states often called themselves "People's Republics".
Of course, if you take that definition of 'socialist', then India most certainly isn't socialist.
My point: Language isn't simple. Politics isn't simple. Mixing the two simplifies neither.
Decide? No. Correlate strongly with? Yes.