Indian foot-dragging, to this point, was motivated by a combination of decades-old reflexive Indian economic protectionism dating back to its socialist days, the still very much present “Permit Wallah” bureaucracy and Indian hopes of squeezing additional concessions out of Musk by using potential competition from the partially-Indian-owned OneWeb as “encouragement.” But OneWeb’s architectural limitations make it incapable of being effective competition to Starlink at the retail consumer level. Its cost structure and static network capacity also make it a doubtful competitor for enterprise-level service.
Building an Indian plant to produce 20% of the Starlink terminals to be sold in India turned out to be about as far as Elon was willing to go.

Further Indian dithering was, I think, short-circuited by a growing realization that other developing economies, whose nations had approved Starlink service much earlier, were proving more attractive places for foreign investment by those seeking alternatives to increasingly problematical former investments in the PRC. India never wants to depend nearly as much on export-directed manufacturing as has the PRC, but it does want at least some of that action. I suspect it was finding that Starlink availability to obviate any land-based or GEO-only-based telecom service restrictions on enterprise-level service was something it needed to have to stay competitive.

The only potential alternative would be to wait several more years in the hope that Kuiper could offer a better deal. That seems unlikely given Kuiper’s less-favorable cost structure. And there is, of course, that wait. India correctly understands that further waiting would definitely injure its competitiveness further and that such losses in the interim would totally submerge any possible cost benefits even were those likely to manifest – which they are not.

You know the answer. Someone hasn’t received their check yet.