It was randomly pointed out in the context of a discussion that might be summarized as "the problems India has," so it could reasonably be read as a slight on Geode. I don't think it was meant that way, but I had to read it a couple of times to determine that it wasn't.
Nothing. The article mentioned Indian and China and trains and I learned from some Geode guys at a talk a while back that both their government use Geode as their ticketing backend store.
I just thought it was a fun fact. I haven't used Geode myself, but it looks fairly well designed.