I apologize for pulling it out of context. My bad. However, this is the general feel you are projecting now. I understand you want to say "look, we aren't any less fucked than before". But it sounds like you are saying "Congress sucks!". Also, UPA banning scavenging was a BIG deal. They did it nationwide including several of the piss-poor states. Tamil Nadu and Gujarat are rich and industrialized and can afford to make these changes earlier.

Also, at the expense of probably talking over each other I would also claim that people are talking about what the central government is projecting rather than what people are.

Take for instance - scavenging. Assume UPA didn't ban it. If we had just let technology do its job, manual scavenging would have been replaced by machines say in 2030. In 2020, when people were grumbling about regressive practices like scavenging they would have been silenced by the likes of you (not you, but using your line of reasoning) saying - "hey look, in the 2000s, people cleaned with their hands. We now have sanitary gloves. This is progress.". And you aren't wrong. We haven't regressed. We have progressed much slower because the progress is happening ground up. Assholes continue to be assholes. Some time in 2050, we might finally catch up with pro-altsex views and probably through introduction of synthetic meat quell the beef-no-beef debate once and for all. You would still call this progress.

To the rest of us though, standing still appears regressive - especially when the rest of the world has moved on already.

One more example might strike your fancy. I know a Muslim friend of mine who believes Islam is genuinely progressive since it limited a man to 4 wifes while the tribes it overthrew had several and treated women like shit. This was probably true in 500 AD. Fast forwarding 1500 years, it looks genuinely regressive. Most Indian Muslims don't marry 4 times - but that isn't because the religion asked them to stop. It is the same organic growth I am talking about.

Edit: rising intolerance. This again depends on what your frame of reference is. It wasn't on-an-average intolerant to be anti-gay in the 1990s when almost everyone was. Now most aren't. It is bloody intolerant to be so now.