python's packaging, especially compared to state of the art which cargo represents, is really, really poor. documenting direct dependencies is just a start. requirements.txt is somehow simplistic and complex at the same time (remember about the special options which thankfully aren't used too much) and you can also list dependencies in setup.py, too.
there's the Pipfile initiative which gives me much hope, though :)
Are you talking about requirements.txt? Requirements.txt falls short of cargo or really any other mainstream language's dependency doc (no reproducible builds, for one thing -- effectively almost as bad as undocumented).
I wonder where have you lived? I rarely found (if ever) an undocumented dependency list for any serious Python project in the last couple of years.