I don’t think that’s accurate - I remember being in Delhi circa 2010 and dinners at the nice hotels coming to something close to this amount, albeit with (not outrageous) wine.
I actually went and pulled up the menu for one of the restaurants at the Taj Palace, a place I know well, and an app and entree picked at random came to $73, easily crossing the $125 mark for two without dessert or any beverages.
You can check the menu for Machan hotel from the Taj Palace here [0]. The most expensive item on the menu (a seafood grill, which is probably not a single-person dish) is around $30, and there are plenty of dishes in the sub-$20 range. I've eaten in several five-star hotels in India from various chains (Taj, ITC, Trident, etc) in various cities (Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata). Excluding drinks, I can't recall paying over Rs. 2500 before tax for 2. It helps that my SO and I are both vegetarian, but even non-vegetarian would only cost around 50% more. Drinks - especially hard liquor - are crazy expensive though, and will easily cost you Rs. 1000+ including tax for even a single large drink or cocktail.
Just to add, these are five-star restaurants we're talking about it. While I am privileged enough to be able to afford them, even I don't eat at such places more than 2-3 times an year if that. At very good non-five-star restaurants (where the food is arguably better if you ask me) you can have a meal for two for under Rs. 2000 including tax. One of my favourites in the NCR region is 21 Gun Salute in Gurgaon [0]. And at a chain like Haldiram's [1], which is where most Indians including me would go for a normal weekend outing, you can have a meal for 2 for under Rs. 500.
Obviously, I realize you have a lot more experience with a wide variety of places, I was just making a comment that the contention from the article is at least plausible.
I don't deny that it's possible. If you're having champagne and caviar on your date you're definitely going to run a bill of over Rs. 10k. But the author claims that 8k is a typical expense for a date night out, which is absurd.
I actually went and pulled up the menu for one of the restaurants at the Taj Palace, a place I know well, and an app and entree picked at random came to $73, easily crossing the $125 mark for two without dessert or any beverages.