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Recent IiT Features

  • Challenging the Idea of India: Accommodating the Nagas

    For over sixty years, in few areas, has the idea of India been more strongly challenged as in the tiny state of Nagaland, located well east of Kolkata (Calcutta). It was here that the first shots for an independent breakaway nation were fired within a decade of India securing independence from Britain in 1947.

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  • Public Interest Litigation in India: Time for an Audit

    Public Interest Litigation (PIL), which aims to use the courts to advance social justice, began in India about thirty years ago when procedures for expanding access to justice were developed. The judiciary, aiming to recapture popular support after its complicity in Indira Gandhi’s declaration of Emergency rule, encouraged litigation concerning the interests of the poor and marginalized.

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  • India’s MMRCA Deal: Muddled Rationale, Costly Adventure?

    Although nowhere near as high profile or politically dramatic as the 2008 Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, India’s proposed $10 billion procurement of 126 medium multirole combat aircraft (MRCA) may have a much more profound impact on India’s strategic relations, particularly if a U.S. Platform – either Lockheed’s F-16 E/F or Boeing’s F/A-18 E/F – is selected as the winning bid.

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India in Transition - Science & Technology

  • India’s MMRCA Deal: Muddled Rationale, Costly Adventure?
    Vipin Narang
    10/26/2009
    Vipin Narang

    Although nowhere near as high profile or politically dramatic as the 2008 Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, India’s proposed $10 billion procurement of 126 medium multirole combat aircraft (MRCA) may have a much more profound impact on India’s strategic relations, particularly if a U.S. Platform – either Lockheed’s F-16 E/F or Boeing’s F/A-18 E/F – is selected as the winning bid.

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  • No Good Choices for the Indian Air Force
    Bharat Karnad
    10/12/2009
    Bharat Karnad.jpg
    In the Medium-range Multi-Role Combat Aircraft (MMRCA) sweepstakes, the Indian Air Force (IAF) is confronted with many choices, all of them bad. Whatever the IAF’s reasons for wanting a new aircraft, the Indian government means to use the deal to make international political capital, gain leverage in bilateral relations, and cement a strategic partnership.
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  • Higher Technical Education in India at the Crossroads
    M. A. Pai
    02/08/2009
    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. As a result, specific initiatives to close this gap between India and the developed world in terms of quality are now needed.
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  • Changing Face of Indian Energy System: A March towards Normalcy
    Varun Rai
    09/28/2008
    Dr. Varun Rai, Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, reports on the groundbreaking impact India’s major energy policy reforms have had since 1998. Rai asserts that the policy will provide enough transparency and the right economic signals leading to the emergence of an efficient energy system in India.
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  • Suicide Seeds? Biotechnology Meets the Developmental State
    Ronald J. Herring
    12/16/2007
    On September 7, 2001, India’s then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced a national policy with the vision of “shaping biotechnology into a premier precision tool of the future for creation of wealth and ensuring social justice – especially for the welfare of the poor.” Biotechnology, in the aims of the policy, was to combat obdurate diseases and nutritional deficiencies, increase agricultural production, and protect the environment. Scientifically, these are all plausible – though distal and aspirational – claims.
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