I think you should not club the two points together. Your first point makes a lot of sense because even if you say that the Indian government officials were "tad computer illiterate", LibreOffice is still not an acceptable replacement majorly due the UI and the loss of basic features.
I think LibreOffice UI falls into acceptable category. It might not be the most polished UI but it gets the work done efficiently. There is not much difference in productivity in two acceptable UIs.
A UI can be thought of being easy-to-use with the frequency of usage. I have been using Linux for many years. Now, whenever I use Windows the only thought in my mind is how can someone use a software so clumsy.
