See? That's just it! Most people who do well in high-school get pushed into technical fields. My cousins are mostly engineers or doctors, and a few are lawyers. "Liberal arts"? That's something that children of rich parents do when they are not too good at studies. Some girls do it when they want to be housewives when they are done with studies.
I have a bachelors in EE (E&C) and have worked for a few multinationals. I have had to work with western-European and American colleagues. If I were asked for my subjective evaluation, I'd say that my EE colleagues at this level are more or less the same. Yes, the degree mills of India do churn out engineers by the millions. 10% of them understand what they have learnt. The others memorize and regurgitate their notes. It's fairly easy to screen people at this level. And that's why I find my colleagues comparable.
Leaving aside medicine, about which I know nothing, a masters degree from India in science or engineering is mostly useless. Academia, with the exception of IITs and IISc, is mostly a joke.
To conclude: Yes, education here is generally bad, but not as bad as this article paints it out to be.