I grew up in Kerala in the 80s. When I go back I feel like we have walked backwards in many areas - religious conservatism and fundamentalism are out in the open. The internet had a huge role to play in that. Still better than many other states, but certainly not what it could have been.
There are certainly many good things the Communists did, but it has also been the most violent (by democratic standards, not on a North Korea scale). Now, that isn't surprising because that's been the case with communism throughout history. Back then Stalin posters were everywhere, and most of us were only exposed to one side of such people.
I was born in 1989 and even post-USSR we had lots of books in English and Malayalam translated from Russian. From Raduga publishers, I had an illustrated astronomy book narrated as a grandfather making his kids observe the night sky; a book about a Moscow kid going to the countryside where his father was stationed; a book about a girl who kept on her not-remote farm a tall deer, two wolves (one had offspring that was star of a military parade), a tiger (who died of a heart attack at a zoo) and a boring horse.
There are certainly many good things the Communists did, but it has also been the most violent (by democratic standards, not on a North Korea scale). Now, that isn't surprising because that's been the case with communism throughout history. Back then Stalin posters were everywhere, and most of us were only exposed to one side of such people.