Not to mention some of the most ridiculously opulent palace hotels are in India as well.
Take for example this one in Udaipur:
Taj Lake Palace - Taj Hotels, Resorts & Palaces
Starts at around $600 a night upwards to $13,000 a night. You also have to take a guests-only boat into the middle of the lake to get to the island. Definitely keeps the riff-raff out.
or this one in Jodhpur which was a former maharajah's palace and looks like a Parliament building:
Umaid Bhawan Palace - Taj Hotels, Resorts & Palaces
6793026 was probably just pissed his travel agent marketed to him a "luxury package" and it turned out to be a 3 star hotel he was booked in. Plus any experienced traveler can tell you stars are virtually meaningless especially in Asia and refer to the amenities offered rather than any objective standard. Even more so, to attribute power outages to the hotel rather than the city's power grid is something to be laughed at. I suspect he may be one of those Tripadvisor reviewers that leave a one star review for a resort when it "rained too much".
Not that any of this matters to intrepid travelers or the OP, who's looking to stay in guesthouses/hostels and keep to a backpackers budget.