Since 1947, when independence was achieved, India has been one of the few developing countries to invest extensively in both Science and Technical education. The results, though impressive in terms of quantity, have a mixed track record in terms of quality.

If India becomes one of the leading powers of the 21st century, as is widely predicted, how will it exercise its power and influence? The answer to this question is being shaped by four competing visions of India’s place in the international system. The oldest of these can be traced to India’s struggle for freedom, when homage was paid to the notion that India ought to serve as a counterexample to the West’s role in international affairs.

The Indian government has recently announced a major expansion in government-sponsored science education in India. Particularly interesting among the nearly ninety new institutions planned are five Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER) in Pune: Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Chandigarh and Bhopal. These IISERs would combine advanced scientific research with the teaching of undergraduate and post-graduate degree courses in the basic sciences.

The horrific terror attacks in Mumbai are a harsh reminder of a grim reality stalking India, which portends a disquieting prognosis for India. The troubles in India’s neighborhood have been increasingly spilling over into India, the result of acts of commission and omission by its neighbors. Despite the obviousness of this reality, the recent tragedy in Mumbai has harshly exposed the multiple failures of the Indian state to combat this growing threat.

The rapid growth of the Indian economy, the movement of technology jobs to India, and the emergence of a strong Indian software industry have raised questions about whether India could emerge as a serious rival on technological innovation to the United States. But these fears are premature as the gap is large and unlikely to be bridged soon.

The internationalization of Indian firms may seem like the logical extension of an historical trend that began in Europe after the industrial revolution, spread to America in the 19th and 20th centuries, and then took hold in countries like Japan and South Korea. That India would spawn multinationals once it embraced globalization may therefore seem unsurprising, even inevitable.

But there was nothing inevitable about the rise of made-in-India multinationals.

Much has been said about the fallacies in India’s energy policy-a lack of coherent planning, endemic ills of cross-subsidies, inefficiencies of state-owned companies, and so on-to argue the impossibility of India’s ability to meet the energy demands of a growing economy. Although true in past, this argument is weakening. Amidst excessive criticism of every single government action, the real, but subtle, face of Indian energy policy has not attracted mass attention yet. And understandably so:

The primary purpose of physical infrastructure, even by a narrow economic viewpoint, is to support economic activity, while that of social infrastructure, such as education and healthcare, is to build and maintain human capital. Sadly, the infrastructure policy of the Indian government, both past and present, seems to be concerned with reducing fiscal costs, to the detriment of those two core objectives.

In the national budget for 2008-2009, India’s Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram has proposed that the federal government will waive loans to farmers, with the total waiver amount capped at Rs 60,000 crore ($15 billion).

For the past five years, the term ‘Shanghai’ has been ubiquitous in the discourse on urban development in India, particularly so in Mumbai, beginning in 2004 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared in an electoral address his government’s ambition to transform Mumbai into Shanghai, even better it.

Gradually, the word has shifted from a proper noun to a verb, being invoked in Mumbai’s desire to “shanghai itself” or “be shanghai-ified,” with no relation whatsoever to the traditional dictionary meaning of ‘shanghai,’ to force or trick into a place of undesirable position.