1) I think most of the resource sharing is driven out of cost necessities. There are many places where people share a single autorickshaw to the same destination. This is sometimes because there is a shortage of taxi/autorickshaws/bus availability at peak hours.
I tried Uber pool a couple of times in Mumbai and almost always travelled alone. Not sure what's the reason.
2) The status still exists. However it can be practical to not own a car as roads are extremely congested in big cities (in some places temporarily worsened by public transportation infrastructure projects)
As an Indian living in the United States, I hope the development choices made in India skip some of the unsustainable choices made by other countries. Car ownership should be discouraged to a higher degree than what it is today, and we should focus a lot more on efficient carpooling solutions. Things like bikeshare, etc however may never be a realistic solution in most urban cities.
One other thing is most places in Mumbai for example don't have strict zoning practices. I do think that this has some unintentional benefits like lower travel time for commuting by colocating housing and offices.
I think the short lived research timelines is like the rest of the world is heading towards. There's immense pressure in both industry and the world of investments to yield quick results which suit the perception the funding entity is looking for. From the researchers perspective, they'd need long term funding for their research so that the results of various sweeteners could be studied over time. I'm not sure who would fund this.
2) The status still exists. However it can be practical to not own a car as roads are extremely congested in big cities (in some places temporarily worsened by public transportation infrastructure projects)