I feel like it depends what the "grind" is in the game and how it's structured.
What would a turn-based RPG be like if you could avoid all the battles except for bosses and still make meaningful progression?
At the same time, if you're having to grind for hours just to progress, or farm items, that's a chore.
It seems like a fine balance that needs to be struck rather than something which is inherently bad.
Farming for items, grinding out battles to get a rare item drop, waiting for timers to expire to progress or unlock items is all terrible game design - especially if it is done intentionally to push you towards microtransactions.
If a game does that sort of thing I'm either done with it, or I'll cheat to bypass it.
In Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain I used Cheat Engine to have infinite resources and eliminate the timers because that's not an important part of the core gameplay for me and was just a chore.
I have little tolerance for games where I have to grind to get rare item drops, so I avoid MMOs or games like Destiny.
I prefer structured quests which give you a reward at the end, not quests in which certain enemies will appear and may drop a rare item.
But I've also been playing through Etrian Odyssey this year and been having a great time with it. It feels like that game is masterfully crafted where nothing I've done so far has felt like a grind.
They have the right balance of challenging fights, random encounters, and quests, so that it always feels like I can be working towards a goal instead of simply grinding to level up and beat a boss.
The game teaches you early on that this is not an RPG where you should fight every enemy that you encounter - escaping is an important strategy - which helps avoid getting stuck grinding. If an enemy is too tough and I've mapped out the floor, I'll go and do a sidequest or two rather than running around the same area grinding out levels in random battles.
It's a very long game, but I've just been chipping away at it and never felt like any of my time has been wasted by grinding.
I'm also ten years late in playing it, and not in any rush to get through twenty other RPGs this year like a reviewer might, so perhaps I have a different perspective on what constitutes 'grinding'.
I think for me, it's if I am having to specifically go out of my way to run around an area and repeat the same fights over and over again for a reward - whether that's XP, gold, or a rare item drop.
If I'm working towards a goal and fighting most of the random encounters that I run into, that usually doesn't feel like grinding to me. But I know people who think JRPGs are all grind due to random encounters 'interrupting' the rest of the gameplay.