Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has been awarded the chemistry Nobel this year.

He joins a select club of scientists recognised by the Nobel foundation.

But Ramakrishnan joins an even more exclusive group — Indians (by birth) who received such recognition.

The country still awaits a second entry in the most exclusive group — an Indian who gets a Nobel staying and working in India.

So far only C.V. Raman, the founder-member of this club, qualifies.

In the days to come, Indians around the world, especially those in the country, will derive vicarious pleasure from another Indian (at least by birth) earning the top honour.

The Times of India listed India’s Nobel connections on their website, a list which includes British surgeon Ronald Ross and poet Rudyard Kipling — both born in India.

The list stretched to include all categories, as evident from above, contains only 12 names.

Whereas Ramakrishnan is the 13th Nobel prize winner from Cambridge-based MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology alone.

The WolframAlpha search engine returns an estimate of 14,172 patents filed in 2009 for U.S. for the query “U.S. patents filed”.

The comparative figure for China is 2097. For India it returns a figure of 256.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan took his PhD in physics and gets a Nobel for chemistry while investigating a biological process.

Why has no Indian working in India won a science Nobel since independence?

Is it the lack of multi-disciplinary approach in Indian institutions?

Is it our expenditure on R&D? Or the brain drain?

New Delhi is barring residents of Indian Kashmir from travelling to China on separate visas issued by the Chinese embassy.

Saifuddin Soz, senior Kashmiri leader and member of India’s ruling Congress party, has said the decision by China to issue hand-written visas on loose sheets of paper to Kashmiris was “not acceptable”.

Why is China issuing separate visas to people from Indian Kashmir?

Separatist leaders say that China’s decision to issue visas to Kashmiris on loose sheets reflects Beijing’s recognition of Kashmir as disputed territory.

Kashmir, where tens of thousands of people have been killed since an anti-India insurgency broke out in 1989, is divided between India, Pakistan and China.

India controls around 45 percent of the former princely state, Pakistan around a third and China the rest, a largely uninhabited slice of high-altitude desert.

China has given no explanation for its move, but New Delhi took up the matter with the Chinese embassy and asked Beijing to stop discriminating against Indian nationals on the basis of their “ethnicity” and “domicile”.

“How would they feel if India only offers a stamped visa to Tibetans while issuing visas on a separate paper for the applications residing in other parts of China,” an official from the Ministry of Home Affairs was quoted as saying by the Economic  Times.

Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama, who calls for greater autonomy and cultural freedom for Tibet, has lived in northern India since fleeing Tibet during a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

China accuses the Dalai Lama of wanting independence for Tibet.

Beijing’s new visa policy for Indian Kashmir may affect only a handful of residents and businessmen of the disputed Himalayan region but diplomatic implications of the Chinese move could affect relations between Beijing and New Delhi.

China currently has little interest in stoking tensions, as it has been trying in recent years to reassure nervous Western nations that its economic rise will not be matched by military expansion. Diplomats like to talk of “peaceful development”.

Then why is China issuing visas to residents of Indian Kashmir on loose sheets of paper and not on Indian passports?

All the talk of addressing the global imbalances throws a spotlight on contrasting demographic trends in the world's two most populous nations -- China and India.

Prior to the financial crisis, India's annual growth rate of about 9 percent seemed positively moribund next to China's double-digit economic expansion. But purely on demographics, the dimming power of the US consumer could give India an edge over its neighbour in the longer run.

That's what India's trade minister Anand Sharma seemed to suggest last week when he reminded the audience at a London conference that the country had "20 percent of the world's children":

We know that when we talk about emerging countries the consumption patterns are different. Most of China's production is meant for (markets) abroad. India consumes two-thirds of what India produces.

Indeed, Goldman Sachs projects that India's middle class will outstrip China's by 2045. This is some 15 years after half of China's population becomes either too old or too young to be part of the workforce.

Beijing's mandarins are taking note of this monumental shift in dependency ratios. After decades of enforcing a 'one-child' policy in the face of an human rights outcry, China appears to be relaxing its stance on population control. Family-planning officials in Shanghai have begun to urge eligible couples to have two children.

BlackRock Asian equities portfolio manager Jing Ning says it's useful for investors to start thinking about this demographic shift. Healthcare providers, for instance, will look increasingly attractive investments.

"For the next 20 years, it will be critical for the government to reform its social welfare system," she said.

In response to recent reports that two Chinese helicopters intruded into Indian territory in Leh in Jammu and Kashmir, Army Chief Deepak Kapoor said he did get reports of Chinese intrusion but “this is not a new thing.”

“I want to tell you that the press sometimes hypes this but the numbers of intrusions which have taken place this year are on the same level as last year,” Kapoor said.

Soon after that the Indian media reported that Chinese soldiers had crossed the border in Ladakh last week and painted some rocks red.

Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna said, “Let me go on record to say that border with China has been one of the most peaceful boundaries that we have had as compared to other boundary lines with other countries.”

Former Air Force Chief Fali Homi Major and Navy Chief Sureesh Mehta have repeatedly warned that China is a danger to India, and the hawks in the Indian security establishment fear that the Chinese had a strategic plan of encircling India.

Around the time India and China were holding the 13th round of their border talks in August, an article had appeared in China titled “If China takes a little action, the so-called Great Indian Federation can be broken up”.

The article primarily focussed on how China can split India and break it up into 20-30 states like the European Union.

Given this context, many seem to think Indian officials and ministers could be playing down any potential threat from China.

So what do you think is India’s policy towards China? What does India seek to achieve by playing down these intrusions?

Brahma Chellaney, former adviser to India’s National Security Advisory Board, said, “The atmosphere has deteriorated in the recent months, plus there’s been escalation of tensions along the Himalayan border.”

What should be India’s stand on these constant intrusions in the name of a differently perceived Line of Actual Control?

In a Wall Street Journal report, India’s former national security advisor Brajesh Mishra said, “The Chinese must know that if they create something on border there would be an instant reaction far beyond what happened in 1962.”

Many analysts on the other hand believe that India is uncertain about how to handle these intrusions and deal with Beijing’s ‘Rising China’ strategy.

“India is clueless on how to deal with China’s growing belligerence, so it attempts to play down an admitted pattern of growing Chinese incursions.” said Chellaney.

Should India fall back on the U.S. to checkmate any future designs of China to break up India? Or should India focus on trying to find a solution to the long standing border dispute with China so that it can concentrate on consolidating its strategic interests in the region and beyond?

China and India are sitting down for another round of talks this week on their unsettled border, a nearly 50-year festering row that in recent months seems to have gotten worse.

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and India’s National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan are unlikely to announce any agreement on the 3,500 km border, even a small one, but their talks this week may well signal how they intend to move forward on a relationship marked by a  deep, deep “trust deficit”, as former Indian intelligence chief B. Raman puts it.

While the entire Himalayan border is disputed, including the Aksai Chin area, it is the row over large parts of India’s Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern stretch of the mountains that has strained ties in recent months.

The Chinese, says Raman,  are demanding that at least the Tawang tract of Arunachal Pradesh, if not the whole of it, should be transferred to it.  They are apparently adamant that if that doesn’t happen, there won’t be any border settlement, he says.

India’s position is that there can’t be a transfer of populated areas in any border settlement. Tawang is a populated area, its citizens are Indians, New Delhi says.

So firmly have the Chinese dug their heels in, that they refused to endorse an Asian Development Bank  irrigation project in Arunachal Pradesh in June on grounds that it was its territory. Last month, India’s Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna confirmed to parliament in a question-answer session media reports about the Chinese objection to the project which appeared to have stung India.

So where do they go from here ? India’s decision to deploy additional troops along the border in Arunachal Pradesh and beef up its air defences in the region have deepened the sense of unease, more so by making a public announcement of the military moves.  It might be concerned about Chinese buildup in the area and of growing border violations, but to talk openly of the Chinese threat and moves to counter it hardly inspires confidence.

There is a history to this: in the months leading up to the 1962 war between the two countries, India, according to some people at least, took fairly strident positions in public against China, only to be humiliated in the brief conflict.

There are some signs of a calmer, more measured stance in New Delhi and Beijing ahead of this week’s meeting in the Indian capital. There was no need to “demonise” China as a potential threat, India’s top level cabinet committee on security headed by the prime minister concluded last weekend at a preparatory meeting, acording to a report in the Indian Express. But New Delhi will be watching China closely, it said.

Beijing for its part said the two countries must exercise the “greatest political wisdom” to arrive at border settlement. The People’s Daily quoted China’s ambassador to India Zhang Yan as saying: notwithstanding the “twists and turns” in ties, the two countries had the same responsibilities of developing their economies and improving people’s lives.

Bilateral trade, as the People’s Daily in a separate article notes, has flourished despite the strained political relationship. “China has become one of India’s largest trade partners, and India is now one of the most vital investment and overseas project contracting markets for China,” it says.

So is trade going to be the glue holding the world’s two most populous nations together?

(Photographs of India’s Manmohan Singh and China’s Wen Jiabao and Nathu-La on the border between India and China)

The unveiling of India’s top secret nuclear-powered submarine, three decades after it was conceived, has been greeted with much tub-thumping.

Even for a nation hungry for success and even more than that, global recognition, some of the adulation seems excessive and perhaps premature as many are starting to point out.

INS Arihant, or destroyer of enemies, has just made contact with water, as it were, with the navy flooding the dry dock at last weekend’s launch in the southern port city of Visakhapatnam.  It has to be tested in the harbour, then out at sea. The nuclear reactor, the heart of the new technology, has yet to be fitted. Perhaps a bigger moment will be when that reactor goes critical.

“The Arihant is far from reaching operational status, as it currently is little more than floating hull,” as this piece in defence professionals says.

To say that the launch by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh completes the third element in India’s nuclear triad based on missiles, aircraft and underwater strike capability is jumping several years ahead.

As former navy commander Premvir Das notes, an underwater vertical launch system is about the most sophisticated and complex weapons and it is not going to happen any time soon.

Das is worth quoting just to put things in perspective. “For the present, a few years are needed to prove the platform and its systems, first on the surface in harbour, then on the surface at sea and finally, under water, progressively at increasing depths. All along there will be need for corrections and modifications.”

What is significant about the launch is perhaps the announcement itself. For years New Delhi has refused to confirm the existence of the Advanced Technology Vessel project, although anyone who covered the defence ministry got to know about it, sooner or later.

Part of the reluctance was because of the stiff sanctions on import of technology that were already in place because of the nuclear programme.  And it really made little sense to show off a project as cutting edge as this, when you are already blacklisted.

Some of that has changed, with the India-U.S. nuclear deal that virtually recognises India’s nuclear weapons programme. Is that why the project has been unveiled? Or is New Delhi making  a declaration of intent, to raise the game in the Indian Ocean as China begins to extend its reach there.

“What is significant about the launch is that now India has publicly acknowledged its quest to acquire a nuclear submarine and has shown it has the ability to design and build such a platform,” Uday Bhaskar, a former naval commander and now head of the National Maritime Foundation, is quoted as saying in defence professionals.

To be sure the ability to build a nuclear submarine that allows you to remain underwater for long periods and hence travel great distances is a game-changer for any military.  For a nation committed to no-first use of nuclear weapons this allows you to disperse your nuclear weapons deep at sea.

As foreign affairs expert C. Raja Mohan notes here ; “Building a submarine is one of the more complex arts. Powering it with an atomic reactor and arming it with nuclear tipped missile that can be launched from underwater is the acme of modern industrial skill.”

Only five nations — the U.S., Russia, France, Britain and China — have mastered the technology so far. India took a small step last weekend,.

(Photograph of a an old Russian aircraft carrier that was bought by India and Indian military exercises)

Many in India believe that Beijing is building special relationships with India’s old foe Pakistan and Sri Lanka and is extending its reach down the Indian Ocean.

China’s ‘String of Pearls’ strategy seems to be surrounding India and has given food for thought to many in New Delhi for quite some time now.

At the G8 summit in L’Aquila recently, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made a bid in front of the international community to include India in the United Nations Security Council, which would put it on par with China, which is one of the five permanent members.

Christopher J. Pehrson, author of the book “String of Pearls: Meeting the challenge of china’s rising power across the Asian littoral”, says the ‘String of Pearls’ describes the manifestation of China’s rising geopolitical influence through efforts to increase access to ports and airfields, develop special diplomatic relationships and modernize military forces that extend from the South China Sea through the Strait of Malacca, across the Indian Ocean, and on to the Arabian Gulf.

Though India is trying to make a stronghold in South Asia, China seems to have been working consistently over the last four decades to strengthen its south Asian presence and fulfil its ‘String of Pearls’ policy, and that has many in India worried.

Alka Acharya, head of East Asian studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, says that China’s ‘string of pearls’ policy started in the 1980s and its basic aim was to give China increased energy security with refueling stations throughout the world.

But it has helped China project its political and military influence further. Some in India think China’s latest addition to its string of pearls is the Hambantota port in southern Sri Lanka.

Construction on the first phase began last year with Chinese funding, and the whole $1 billion project is expected to finish by 2023.

B. Raman, a retired senior government official, has written a paper on the project of Hambantota port in which he mentions that “the Chinese interest is more strategic than purely commercial. It is very unlikely that Sri Lanka would allow the Chinese Navy to use Hambantota against India. But a Chinese naval presence in Hambantota would add to the concerns of the Indian Navy by increasing the vulnerability of the South to pressures from the Chinese Navy.”

Raman also mentions in his paper that China had helped Pakistan with a similar project in Gwadar on the Mekran coast in Balochistan.

The first phase of construction has already been completed and the port was given a nod when Pervez Musharraf was the president.

When it is done, Hambantota is likely to have an aviation fuel storage facility and a liquefied natural gas refinery. The first phase will have bunkering facilities to refuel ships that pass the nearby shipping lanes, among the world’s busiest.

Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa says India has nothing to worry about because the project is strictly a commercial venture.

India though is taking no chances and is increasing its troops along the northeastern border so as to prevent any further infiltration of Chinese soldiers, who had illegally entered Indian territory last year.

A retired intelligence officer who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity said China had begun building a road in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir in the early 1970s.

“We had got hold of a source who told us that China was building a road from China- Gilgit- Neelam Valley, they had also planned a number of tunnels and bridges in places where roads couldn’t be constructed,” the officer said.

The status of the road is not known, some say it is still under construction.

The Karakoram Highway, which connects China’s Xinjiang region with Pakistan’s north, can also be seen as one of China’s pearls. The highway, called the ninth wonder of the world by some because of its altitude, was completed in 1986 after 20 years of construction.

The road opened up China-Pakistan trade and gave both of India’s rivals a fast route through the mountains, not far from the Line of Control in Kashmir.

Should India be worried about China’s String of Pearls, and will the Chinese strategy dampen India’s plans to be the dominant power in South Asia?

China’s troubled Xinjiang region shares borders with eight countries, which is perhaps one reason President Hu Jintao dropped out of the G8 summit to head home, underscoring the seriousness of the situation and the need to quickly bring the vast oil-rich region under control.

Xinjiang touches Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, besides the Tibet Autonomous Region.

China, as this piece for the Council on Foreign Relations points out, has long been concerned that these states on its periphery both in central and south Asia may be tempted to back a separatist movement in Xinjiang because of the Uighurs’ cultural ties to its neighbours.

To that extent it has cultivated close ties with some of these neighbours, even trying to promote direct trade between Xinjiang and the provinces of neighbouring countries just over the border.

In April this year, the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region signed an agreement to establish friendly provincial relations with Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province, according to this report in the state-run China Daily.

The two sides agreed to explore partnership in oil and gas resources, bilateral trade and agriculture besides vowing to accelerate work on a long-planned direct rail link.

More importantly, Pakistan’s ambassador to China, Masood Khan, who signed the agreement, said the two sides must deepen their partnership to oppose “terrorism, extremism and separatism.”

Beijing’s concerns over the instability in Pakistan especially in the NWFP spilling over into Xinjiang have frequently surfaced, although in perhaps characteristic style, they have gone about it in low-key manner, quite different from the Western approach.

In March this year, Xinjiang governor Nuer Baikeli, speaking on the margins of China’s annual parliament meeting said his region faced threats from violence rippling across south and central Asia. Militant attacks in Pakistan and even the one in Mumbai and the violence in Afghanistan showed Xinjiang had reason to fear, he said.

The links go back to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. As the piece for the Council of Foreign Relations noted, many Uighurs travelled into Pakistan and Afghanistan in the 1980s and 90s, where they were exposed to Islamic extremism.

China has worried ever since about the militants slipping in and out Xinjiang.

Pakistan’s Daily Times noted the Chinese concerns, but said Islamabad could only play a limited role given that it was itself fighting to regain control of its territory in the northwest from the militants.

[PHOTO: A boy runs past an overturned car just outside the Uighurs neighbourhood in Urumqi in China's Xinjiang Autonomous Region July 8, 2009. REUTERS/Nir Elias]

Foreign Policy magazine has just released its 2009 list of failing states or those at risk of failure and South Asia makes for sobering reading.

All of India’s neighbours, except for tiny Bhutan, figure in the list of top 25 states that are faltering, although their rankings have improved marginally over the previous year.

So Afghanistan remains at number 7 in the table of failing states topped by Somalia. Pakistan is ranked 10th, just marginally better than its 9th position in last year’s table which perhaps reflects the belief that the state has begun to fight back the militants who threaten its existence.

(The higher you are on this list, based on 12 indicators measuring state cohesion and performance, the closer you are to failure)

You can see the full report of The Failed States Index 2009 here.

But just to distil it, here are the rankings for South Asian nations as they changed over the past year. Myanmar is ranked 13th which is what it was in 2008.

Bangladesh has moved down to 19th position from 12th the previous year, reflecting perhaps the return of an elected civilian government there.  But it remains at risk and as a Reuters analysis here points out there is a tendency to neglect the militant threat in Bangladesh, with all the attention focused on the violence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sri Lanka takes the 22nd spot and Nepal 25rd, both slightly less at risk this year than in 2008 but still very much in the world’s top 25 states.

And India? Foreign Policy puts it at 87th position, a healthy score for a country that some thought wouldn’t survive especially during the Sikh revolt of the 1980s, and other insurgencies in that period.

Giant neighbour China, according to the editors of the magazine, is more at risk with a score of 57.

[Photo of a U.S. Marine in southern Afghanistan]

While Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meeting with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari in Russia captured all the attention,  Singh’s talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao may turn out to be just as important in easing off renewed pressure on the complex relationship between the world’s rising powers.

India said this month it will bolster its defences on the unsettled China border, deploying up to 50,000 troops and its most latest Su-30 fighter aircraft at a base in the northeast.

While upgrading the defences has been a long-running objective, the timing seemed to suggest New Delhi’s renewed fears of “strategic encirclement” by China by deepening ties with all of its neighbours, not just Pakistan but also Sri Lanka and Nepal.

The chief of the Indian air force, reflecting the anxieties in the security establishment, said China was a far bigger threat than Pakistan because so little was known about Beijing’s combat capabilities.

Predictably enough, the Indian military moves and statements drew a strong response from China’s official media warning that New Delhi’s tough new posture was dangerous if it thought it would compel China to cave in. Beijing was in a different league, both in terms of national power, economic scale and global influence, the media said.

On Monday, Hu and Singh met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the BRIC meeting that followed in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg. Details from the meeting were sketchy, but the Press Trust of India said the two leaders supported an early meeting of a joint economic group to push trade ties. 

They also touched on the border dispute at the heart of the more than four decades of distrust, noting that top negotiators were due to meet in August. The People’s Daily said Hu stressed on expanding economic cooperation and investment flows and aims to take bilateral trade to $60 billion in 2010. It stood at $51.8 billion in 2008, the paper said.

India’s decision to attend the SCO, where it has observer status, was also a step forward. Since its inception the forum has been seen in India as China-centric with the main strategic objective of limiting U.S. dominance on China’s periphery and in that way prevent the hemming-in of both China and Russia.

By attending the summit is New Dehi signalling its intention to engage China on a broad front and not shy away?

And did Beijing shift ground a bit by acceding to the declaration by the BRIC - Brazil, Russia, India and China - calling for U.N. reform and saying that the grouping understood and supported India and Brazil’s aspirations to play a greater role in the United Nations.

Both Brazil and India are candidates for permanent members of the Security Council and Beijing has long been cold to the idea of at least its southern neighbour getting a place on the high table. It wasn’t a ringing endorsement at Yekaterinburg but perhaps the first shuffling of chairs?

[Manmohan Singh and Hu Jintao at the SCO summit and a Chinese soldier at the border]