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http://http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-07-27/news/32889744_1_higher-education-asian-universities-indian-universities
MUMBAI: Despite the English language advantage and the government's enhanced focus on higher studies, India's top educational and research institutes, including the IITs and IIMs, lag Chinese universities in global ranking.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings has nine universities from China in its 2012 list of Top 400 compared with just one from India. Another latest ranking by Guardian Higher Education Network shows nine Chinese universities among top 50 Asian universities, while no university from India makes it to the list.
China has been consistently scoring over India in higher education for several years, as reflected even in previous rankings.
The Times ranking, based on five broad parameters: teaching, research, citations, industry income or innovation and international outlook in terms of staff, students and research, covers subjects including engineering and technology, arts and humanities, health, life sciences, physical sciences and social sciences.
"China has invested heavily in infrastructure, research resources and that too from local councils and state bodies, not just from central government," says Anil Gupta, professor and founder, Honey Bee Network, IIM-Ahmedabad.
The draft document of the 12th Five Year Plan proposes to increase investment on higher education to 25% of all government education spending, or 1.5% of GDP from the current 18% and 1.12% respectively. An increase of 0.38% of GDP means an additional allocation of about Rs25,000 crore to higher education for the Centre and the states together.
On the other hand, China's expenditure in education from the central public budget reached more than 1.2 trillion yuan ($191 billion) during January-November last year, an increase of 25.8% from previous year, according to reports.
"The biggest gap (for India) lies in the quantum of research. A systematic approach needs to be taken to reform the structure of universities into teaching and research institutions," says Devang V Khakhar, director, IIT-Bombay. He sees a need for a significantly greater financial support for infrastructure, faculty positions and research facilities.
AUGC report "Higher Education in India at a Glance" paints a dismal picture on student enrolment. While 86% of students complete graduation, mere 12% opt for post-graduate education and barely 1% go for research.
http://http://www.firstpost.com/world/in-himalayan-arms-race-india-lags-behind-china-396086.html
Asias two great powers are facing off here in the eastern Himalayan mountains. China has vastly improved roads and is building or extending airports on its side of the border in Tibet. It has placed nuclear-capable intermediate missiles in the area and deployed around 300,000 troops across the Tibetan plateau, according to a 2010 Pentagon report.
Indian armymen repair a bulldozer on the Tezpur-Tawang highway. Reuters
India is in the midst of a 10-year plan to scale up its side. In the state of Arunachal Pradesh, new infantry patrols started on the frontier in May, as part of a surge to add some 60,000 men to the 120,000 already in the region. It has stationed two Sukhoi 30 fighter squadrons and will deploy the Brahmos cruise missile.
If they can increase their military strength there, then we can increase our military strength in our own land, Defence Minister A.K. Anthony told parliament recently.
The main military supply route through sparsely populated Arunachal is largely dirt track. Along the roadside, work gangs of local women chip boulders into gravel with hammers to repair the road, many with babies strapped to their backs. Together with a few creaky bulldozers, this is the extent of the armys effort to carve a modern highway from the liquid hillside, one that would carry troops and weaponry to the disputed ceasefire line in any conflict with China.
India and China fought a brief frontier war here in 1962, and Chinese maps still show all of Arunachal Pradesh within Chinas borders. The continuing standoff will test whether these two Asian titans each with more than a billion people, blossoming trade ties and ambitions as global powers can rise peacefully together. With the United States courting India in its pivot to Asia, the stakes are all the higher.
With the kind of developments that are taking place in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and infrastructure that is going up, it gives a certain capability to China, Indias army chief, Gen. V.K. Singh, told Reuters the day before he left office on May 31. And you say at some point, if the issue does not get settled, there could be some problem.
Indian analysts and policymakers went further in their Non-Alignment 2.0″ report released this year. It argues India cannot entirely dismiss the possibility of a major military offensive in Arunachal Pradesh, and suggests New Delhi should prepare to fight an insurgency war if attacked.
We feel very clearly that we need to develop the border infrastructure, engage with our border communities, do that entire development and leave our options open on how to respond to any border incursion, in case tensions ratchet up, Rajiv Kumar, one of the reports authors, said in an interview.
Indian media frequently run warnings of alleged Chinese plots, and both militaries drill near the border. In March, while Chinas foreign minister was visiting Delhi, the Indian air force and army held an exercise dubbed Destruction in Arunachals mountains. Three weeks later, China said its J-10 fighters dropped laser-guided bombs on the Tibetan plateau in high-altitude ground-attack training.
Some policymakers play down the Arunachal face-off. Nuclear weapons on both sides would deter all-out war, and the forbidding terrain makes even conventional warfare difficult. A defence hotline and frequent meetings between top Chinese and Indian officials, including regular gatherings at the border, help ease the pressure. Bilateral trade, which soared to $74 billion in 2011 from a few billion dollars a decade ago, is also knitting ties.
From Chinas perspective, the border dispute with India doesnt rank with Beijings other border or military concerns, such as Taiwan. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin struck an optimistic tone.
China and India are in consensus on the border issue, will work together to protect peace and calm in the border region, and also believe that by jointly working toward the same goal, negotiations on the border will yield results, Liu said.
Hu Shisheng, a Sino-India expert at the government-backed China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said the border dispute casts an oversized shadow in the Indian media where the China threat is perceived to be strong. But any voices within the Chinese military that advocate seizing the region are weak, he said.
Chinas military could take the territory by force, but maintaining the gains in the long term would be exceptionally difficult, Hu said, noting the tough terrain.
Yet with both nations undertaking massive naval modernisations and brushing up against each others interests across South Asia and in the South China Sea, the festering dispute risks being the catalyst for a violent flare-up, some security analysts say.
For thousands of years, Chinese and Indian empires were kept apart by the Himalayas. After years of fast economic growth, the rivals now have the resources to consolidate and patrol their most distant regions.
India is starting to feel fenced in by Chinese agreements with its neighbours that are not strictly military but could be leveraged in a conflict.
Indians sometimes refer to these as a string of pearls, which includes Chinas force deployments in Tibet, access to a Myanmar naval base, and Chinese construction of a deepwater port in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, and another in Gwadar, Pakistan.
Some in the Chinese government worry that India is becoming part of a U.S. strategy to contain China. The United States has sold $8 billion in weapons to India, which is spending about $100 billion over 10 years to modernize its military.
The two nations are unlikely to go to war, but have no choice but to add to their military strength on the border as they gain clout, a senior Indian official with direct experience of Sino-Indian relations told Reuters.
It is the currency of power, he said. In the border negotiations, we are ready to compromise, but up to a point.
The road to Tawang, a centre of Tibetan Buddhism by the border, is one of Indias most strategic military supply routes. Growling convoys of army trucks bring troops, food and fuel through three Himalayan passes on the 320-kilometer muddy coil to camps dotted along the disputed border.
On a road trip in late May and early June, Reuters found much of the 14,000-foot-high road to be a treacherous rutted trail, often blocked by landslides or snow, despite years of promises to widen and resurface it.
At its start in the insurgent-hit tropical plains of Assam, the Tawang road is guarded by soldiers armed with Israeli rifles and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers who sweep for roadside bombs. Near the end a tough two-day drive is the 300-year-old white-walled Tawang monastery.
In the higher reaches, the army convoys struggle along rock-walled valleys to bases near the McMahon Line, the border agreed to by India and Tibet in a 1914 treaty and now the de facto frontier with China. It is the only way in. Supplies are taken to even remoter army posts by 50-mule caravans on three-day treks.
Along the tortuous road, soldiers can be seen shooting at targets on a firing range. Rows of ammunition sheds behind barbed wire *** the landscape on a chilly plateau shared with yaks.
New fuel depots and small bases are springing up. In addition to deploying extra troops, missiles and fighter jets in Arunachal, India plans to buy heavy-lift choppers to carry light artillery to the mountains.
China rules restive Tibet with an iron hand, and tightly restricts visits by foreign media, making independent assessments of the military presence in the region hard. But all signs indicate much more sophisticated infrastructure on the Chinese side of the border.
During the last government-organised visit to Tibet, in 2010, a Reuters journalist saw half a dozen Su-27 fighters, some of the most advanced and lethal aircraft China owns, operating from Lhasas Gonggar airport. China has been building or extending airports across vast and remote Tibet, all of which have a dual military-civilian use.
Meanwhile, residents on the Indian side of the border report the Chinese have built smooth, hard-topped roads stretching to Tibets capital of Lhasa. Chinese border posts, like Indias today, were once only reachable by horse or mule. Now they are connected by asphalt.
Beyond the frontier, the Chinese improvements include laying asphalt on a historic highway across the region of Aksai Chin, which is claimed by India. The construction of the Xinjiang-Tibet national highway 50 years ago shocked India and contributed to the 1962 war.
Chinas rails are improving, too: Beijing opened a train line from Tibet to the region in 2006, and an extension is planned into a prefecture bordering Arunachal.
In a 2010 cable released by Wikileaks, a U.S. diplomat concluded that infrastructure development in Lhoka prefecture, which according to China includes Tawang, was in part to prepare a rear base should a border clash arise.
For years, India deliberately neglected infrastructure in Arunachal Pradesh, partly so it could act as a natural buffer against any Chinese invasion. That policy was dropped when the extent of development on Chinas side became clear.
In 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made his first trip to Arunachal and promised $4 billion to build a 1,700-kilometer highway joining the valleys of the state as well as a train line connecting to New Delhi. These would also make troop movements easier.
Around the same time, former army chief Gen. J.J. Singh was appointed governor of the state and is ramping up infrastructure, power and telecom projects.
Never before in the history of this region has such a massive development programme been conducted here, he said, sipping tea at his residence.
Singh, who spent much of his army career in Arunachal, said
India and China both realise there is enough place and space for both of us to develop. A very mature and pragmatic approach is being taken by both.
But despite 15 rounds of high-level talks, the border issue looks as knotty as ever. Indian media often whip up anger at Chinese border incursions, played down by both governments as a natural result of differing perceptions of where the border lies. Indias defence minister told parliament 500 incursions have been reported in the last two years.
Unable to match Chinas transport network, Indias focus is now on maintaining more troops close to the border.
India struggles to build up infrastructure, said Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has written extensively on the India-China relationship. They have been trying to do this for the past six or seven years now, and it is progressing far more slowly than they would like. What they have done in the interim is build up the troop strength.
COURTING THE LAMAS
One of main irritants in India-China relations, and a key part of Chinas claim to Arunachal, is Tibetan Buddhism. Beijing claims a centuries-old sovereignty over Arunachal and the rest of the Himalayan region.
India hosts the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan government-in-exile. When the Dalai Lama fled Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959, his first stop was the Buddhist monastery in the Arunachal town of Tawang near the border. Three years later, China occupied the fortress-like hilltop monastery in the 1962 war before withdrawing to the current lines.
In the 17th century, Tawang district was the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama. Deified as his latest incarnation, the current Dalai Lama visited the monastery in 2009 and has hinted his next reincarnation will be born in India. Some say in Tawang.
Tibetan Buddhists see the Dalai Lama as a living god; China sees him as a separatist threat. Many in the Indian security community worry that instability in Tibet after his death could endanger India.
So, New Delhi is wooing the locals. The intermingling of the Indian army and the Tawang monks is striking. War memorials on the road are built in the style of Tibetan Buddhist stupas, with prayer wheels and flags. Soldiers frequently visit the temple, and advise the lamas about troop movements and developments on the border.
Lobsang Thapke, a senior lama at the monastery, says Indias troop buildup has made the monks feel safe, but that India was far from matching Chinas road-building prowess.
From our side, we have to go through a lot of difficulty, he said in a carpeted room above the main hall, where child monks chanted morning prayers. They (India) have not black-topped. Gravelling has not been done.
The Indian footprint here isnt always welcome. Indias new wealth is seen in the multi-storey hotels mushrooming between traditional wood-and-stone houses in town, and new Fords and Hyundais on the hilly streets.
But anger is rising about a lack of jobs and perceptions that government corruption is rampant. Student movements have organised strikes in the state capital.
Hotel worker Dorjee Leto says educated young people like himself feel forgotten by India. There is almost no mobile phone coverage, power cuts that last days, and just that long muddy road to the outside world.
Anxiety over China, however, outweighs the irritation with India, says Leto, who like most in Tawang is a follower of Tibetan Buddhism.
Its a fear, because already China has annexed Tibet. We feel part of India, we are used to India, he said.
http://http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/22/world/la-fg-india-toilets22-2010mar22
Reporting from Kolkata, India She grew up in a dusty West Bengal village, where no one had access to toilets. Most of the female villagers headed to a particular field. But it was a bit of a walk and often required asking another woman to help shield you from lecherous men.
Boko, a 35-year-old woman with a yellow sari and a big smile, now sweeps floors at a truck stop with toilets. It's a big improvement, says the woman, who identified herself only by her first name.
A United Nations report released March 15 says that despite progress in the last two decades, 2.4 billion people around the world still lack access to basic sanitary facilities -- including an estimated 638 million in India alone.
Lacking access to a toilet, something most people in the developed world don't think about, involves more than just embarrassment and inconvenience. It's also a significant health hazard. Globally, about 1.5 million children die each year as a result of a lack of water, sanitation and hygiene, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency.
"We go to the toilet on the street," said Basarat Ansari, 30, a homeless laborer working in a ritzy Kolkata neighborhood. "I know other people have to walk in it. But you don't have much choice if you have to go."
Women often have a harder time.
Chandana Das, 40, sat cooking a curry on a Kolkata street where she has lived for years. Nearby, a string of men used a green tiled urinal in open view.
"Men can go over there, but we can't very well do that," Das said. "I'll walk several blocks to a toilet at the market. You have to pay, but what can you do?"
Up to 10% of Kolkata's population lives on the street or in shantytowns -- including rickshaw pullers, migrants from neighboring states and illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. That means many people end up sleeping near where someone else has defecated a few hours earlier.
An estimated three dozen civic groups and neighborhood committees offer public toilets -- only enough so that there are about two per square mile in a teeming city of 15 million.
One such group, Sulabh International, operates 7,500 toilets across the country, in nearly every Indian state, and employs 50,000 people. But founder Bindeshwar Pathak said Sulabh's effort is "just like a peanut," compared with India's needs, which he estimates at 1 million public toilets and 120 million household toilets.
Though the problem in cities is often more acute, globally 70% of those without toilets live in rural areas.
In India, parents often won't allow their daughters who have reached puberty to attend rural schools that lack toilets, fearing they will be molested, which would ruin their chances of attracting a suitor. That makes toilets a linchpin in efforts to improve women's status.
Some blame the state for the dearth of public facilities.
"If officials spent even 10% of our tax money where they should, we'd be a far more developed country," said Gourav Ghosh, 24, a hotel developer in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta. "But it seeps away from corruption. Before an election, the toilets are maintained. Afterwards, it's back to usual -- ***** and disrepair. Inevitably, it's poor people who suffer."
Others blame a lack of civic pride. It's not unusual to see men, including well-dressed businessmen, urinating on a wall just beside a public toilet to avoid the smell and ***** inside.
New Delhi has vowed to clean up in time for the Commonwealth Games it is hosting this fall. City officials are encouraging companies to build 250 new toilet facilities-- "fully air-conditioned, with flowerpots and large mirrors" -- around the capital.
"We are all set to usher in a toilet revolution in the city," Amiya Chandra, head of the city department handling the project, told the media at the launch.
The city has suggested that restaurant companies fund construction in order to attract customers into adjoining eateries or, as news website Mid-Day.com explained: "Have a full meal inside without pinching your nose."
Chandra said the project promised to lend an artistic flair to India's capital.
"Presently, the city of Delhi resembles a stinking toilet," he said, "but we are trying hard to make toilets an aesthetic experience."
http://http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-column-how-far-is-india-behind-china/20120123.htm
The debate in a small group earlier this week was about how far India is behind China. The quick numbers tossed out varied all the way from 10 to 25 years and more.
Figuring out the gap between the two "rising giants of Asia" is in fact an instructive study.
For instance, China's GDP in 2011 was $6.99 trillion, or nearly four times India's $1.84 trillion.
If the Indian economy were to grow at an annual average of 7.8 per cent (the rate for the past decade), it would take 18 years to get to China's current size. If growth were to accelerate to nine per cent, it would still take 15 years.
Could India have avoided falling so far behind China?
After all, when China began its Four Modernisations in 1978, the two economies were of roughly the same size ($145-148 billion).
Even in 1991, when India began its reforms, China's economy was only 40 per cent bigger than India's $268 billion.
The answer is that, in many ways, India in 1991 was already two decades and more behind China on key indicators, and it has not closed the gap.
For instance, China's literacy rate in 1991 was 78 per cent, whereas India's was just 52 per cent.
Even today, India's literacy rate, at 74 per cent, is short of where China's was in 1991; meanwhile, China has moved ahead to 94 per cent literacy.
Ditto with life expectancy; China's in 1991 was 70 years.
Twenty years later, India had a tally of only 64 years. Of course, China's life expectancy has improved slowly in the last two decades, and is at 73; still, it will take India two decades and more to get to that figure.
Some seemingly large gaps might be closed more quickly. Thus, China's goods exports are about six times India's.
However, India's exports have multiplied nearly seven-fold in the last decade (from $43.8 billion to an expected $300 billion this year), so it could conceivably replicate China's current export figure in less than 10 years.
No such hope can be applied to industry, where too China's is more than six times India's.
Move to research, and China has a citation index that is twice as good as India's.
In the space programme, China sent its first man into space in 2003; India hopes to do it in 2015, but is likely to take longer.
As for infrastructure, China has more than 30,000 km of expressways on which traffic speeds go up to 120 kmph; India has a few hundred kilometres.
China has a whole inter-city network of high-speed trains, five times as many Internet users, and nearly a million MW of power generation capacity.
India has only fractionally increased its train speeds since the first Rajdhani Express of 1969, and even if the country doubles power generation capacity every decade, starting from 150,000 MW in 2010, it will take more than a quarter century to get to where China is today.
As for agriculture, China applies fully three times the fertiliser per arable hectare that India does.
The smallest gap is in the mobile phone population. And the largest gap perhaps in the quality of political leadership - China is able to produce a new crop of top-rung leaders every decade, in Beijing and in the provinces and large cities, whereas India's political parties offer little beyond an upper crust.
China's project execution is of course in a league of its own. As for sport, India got one gold medal in the last Olympics, China got 51.
The cold message to all Indians: stop talking of the two countries in the same breath, and dump the "Chindia" coinage.
For why does India not bracket itself with Iran, whose economic size in relation to India (1:4) is broadly the same as India's to China?
My point is here that India lags behind in all sectors with China and even some with Pakistan but still obsesses about China? Even when China is about 40 years ahead of India?
MUMBAI: Despite the English language advantage and the government's enhanced focus on higher studies, India's top educational and research institutes, including the IITs and IIMs, lag Chinese universities in global ranking.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings has nine universities from China in its 2012 list of Top 400 compared with just one from India. Another latest ranking by Guardian Higher Education Network shows nine Chinese universities among top 50 Asian universities, while no university from India makes it to the list.
China has been consistently scoring over India in higher education for several years, as reflected even in previous rankings.
The Times ranking, based on five broad parameters: teaching, research, citations, industry income or innovation and international outlook in terms of staff, students and research, covers subjects including engineering and technology, arts and humanities, health, life sciences, physical sciences and social sciences.
"China has invested heavily in infrastructure, research resources and that too from local councils and state bodies, not just from central government," says Anil Gupta, professor and founder, Honey Bee Network, IIM-Ahmedabad.
The draft document of the 12th Five Year Plan proposes to increase investment on higher education to 25% of all government education spending, or 1.5% of GDP from the current 18% and 1.12% respectively. An increase of 0.38% of GDP means an additional allocation of about Rs25,000 crore to higher education for the Centre and the states together.
On the other hand, China's expenditure in education from the central public budget reached more than 1.2 trillion yuan ($191 billion) during January-November last year, an increase of 25.8% from previous year, according to reports.
"The biggest gap (for India) lies in the quantum of research. A systematic approach needs to be taken to reform the structure of universities into teaching and research institutions," says Devang V Khakhar, director, IIT-Bombay. He sees a need for a significantly greater financial support for infrastructure, faculty positions and research facilities.
AUGC report "Higher Education in India at a Glance" paints a dismal picture on student enrolment. While 86% of students complete graduation, mere 12% opt for post-graduate education and barely 1% go for research.
http://http://www.firstpost.com/world/in-himalayan-arms-race-india-lags-behind-china-396086.html
Asias two great powers are facing off here in the eastern Himalayan mountains. China has vastly improved roads and is building or extending airports on its side of the border in Tibet. It has placed nuclear-capable intermediate missiles in the area and deployed around 300,000 troops across the Tibetan plateau, according to a 2010 Pentagon report.
Indian armymen repair a bulldozer on the Tezpur-Tawang highway. Reuters
India is in the midst of a 10-year plan to scale up its side. In the state of Arunachal Pradesh, new infantry patrols started on the frontier in May, as part of a surge to add some 60,000 men to the 120,000 already in the region. It has stationed two Sukhoi 30 fighter squadrons and will deploy the Brahmos cruise missile.
If they can increase their military strength there, then we can increase our military strength in our own land, Defence Minister A.K. Anthony told parliament recently.
The main military supply route through sparsely populated Arunachal is largely dirt track. Along the roadside, work gangs of local women chip boulders into gravel with hammers to repair the road, many with babies strapped to their backs. Together with a few creaky bulldozers, this is the extent of the armys effort to carve a modern highway from the liquid hillside, one that would carry troops and weaponry to the disputed ceasefire line in any conflict with China.
India and China fought a brief frontier war here in 1962, and Chinese maps still show all of Arunachal Pradesh within Chinas borders. The continuing standoff will test whether these two Asian titans each with more than a billion people, blossoming trade ties and ambitions as global powers can rise peacefully together. With the United States courting India in its pivot to Asia, the stakes are all the higher.
With the kind of developments that are taking place in the Tibet Autonomous Region, and infrastructure that is going up, it gives a certain capability to China, Indias army chief, Gen. V.K. Singh, told Reuters the day before he left office on May 31. And you say at some point, if the issue does not get settled, there could be some problem.
Indian analysts and policymakers went further in their Non-Alignment 2.0″ report released this year. It argues India cannot entirely dismiss the possibility of a major military offensive in Arunachal Pradesh, and suggests New Delhi should prepare to fight an insurgency war if attacked.
We feel very clearly that we need to develop the border infrastructure, engage with our border communities, do that entire development and leave our options open on how to respond to any border incursion, in case tensions ratchet up, Rajiv Kumar, one of the reports authors, said in an interview.
Indian media frequently run warnings of alleged Chinese plots, and both militaries drill near the border. In March, while Chinas foreign minister was visiting Delhi, the Indian air force and army held an exercise dubbed Destruction in Arunachals mountains. Three weeks later, China said its J-10 fighters dropped laser-guided bombs on the Tibetan plateau in high-altitude ground-attack training.
Some policymakers play down the Arunachal face-off. Nuclear weapons on both sides would deter all-out war, and the forbidding terrain makes even conventional warfare difficult. A defence hotline and frequent meetings between top Chinese and Indian officials, including regular gatherings at the border, help ease the pressure. Bilateral trade, which soared to $74 billion in 2011 from a few billion dollars a decade ago, is also knitting ties.
From Chinas perspective, the border dispute with India doesnt rank with Beijings other border or military concerns, such as Taiwan. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin struck an optimistic tone.
China and India are in consensus on the border issue, will work together to protect peace and calm in the border region, and also believe that by jointly working toward the same goal, negotiations on the border will yield results, Liu said.
Hu Shisheng, a Sino-India expert at the government-backed China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, said the border dispute casts an oversized shadow in the Indian media where the China threat is perceived to be strong. But any voices within the Chinese military that advocate seizing the region are weak, he said.
Chinas military could take the territory by force, but maintaining the gains in the long term would be exceptionally difficult, Hu said, noting the tough terrain.
Yet with both nations undertaking massive naval modernisations and brushing up against each others interests across South Asia and in the South China Sea, the festering dispute risks being the catalyst for a violent flare-up, some security analysts say.
For thousands of years, Chinese and Indian empires were kept apart by the Himalayas. After years of fast economic growth, the rivals now have the resources to consolidate and patrol their most distant regions.
India is starting to feel fenced in by Chinese agreements with its neighbours that are not strictly military but could be leveraged in a conflict.
Indians sometimes refer to these as a string of pearls, which includes Chinas force deployments in Tibet, access to a Myanmar naval base, and Chinese construction of a deepwater port in Hambantota, Sri Lanka, and another in Gwadar, Pakistan.
Some in the Chinese government worry that India is becoming part of a U.S. strategy to contain China. The United States has sold $8 billion in weapons to India, which is spending about $100 billion over 10 years to modernize its military.
The two nations are unlikely to go to war, but have no choice but to add to their military strength on the border as they gain clout, a senior Indian official with direct experience of Sino-Indian relations told Reuters.
It is the currency of power, he said. In the border negotiations, we are ready to compromise, but up to a point.
The road to Tawang, a centre of Tibetan Buddhism by the border, is one of Indias most strategic military supply routes. Growling convoys of army trucks bring troops, food and fuel through three Himalayan passes on the 320-kilometer muddy coil to camps dotted along the disputed border.
On a road trip in late May and early June, Reuters found much of the 14,000-foot-high road to be a treacherous rutted trail, often blocked by landslides or snow, despite years of promises to widen and resurface it.
At its start in the insurgent-hit tropical plains of Assam, the Tawang road is guarded by soldiers armed with Israeli rifles and shoulder-mounted rocket launchers who sweep for roadside bombs. Near the end a tough two-day drive is the 300-year-old white-walled Tawang monastery.
In the higher reaches, the army convoys struggle along rock-walled valleys to bases near the McMahon Line, the border agreed to by India and Tibet in a 1914 treaty and now the de facto frontier with China. It is the only way in. Supplies are taken to even remoter army posts by 50-mule caravans on three-day treks.
Along the tortuous road, soldiers can be seen shooting at targets on a firing range. Rows of ammunition sheds behind barbed wire *** the landscape on a chilly plateau shared with yaks.
New fuel depots and small bases are springing up. In addition to deploying extra troops, missiles and fighter jets in Arunachal, India plans to buy heavy-lift choppers to carry light artillery to the mountains.
China rules restive Tibet with an iron hand, and tightly restricts visits by foreign media, making independent assessments of the military presence in the region hard. But all signs indicate much more sophisticated infrastructure on the Chinese side of the border.
During the last government-organised visit to Tibet, in 2010, a Reuters journalist saw half a dozen Su-27 fighters, some of the most advanced and lethal aircraft China owns, operating from Lhasas Gonggar airport. China has been building or extending airports across vast and remote Tibet, all of which have a dual military-civilian use.
Meanwhile, residents on the Indian side of the border report the Chinese have built smooth, hard-topped roads stretching to Tibets capital of Lhasa. Chinese border posts, like Indias today, were once only reachable by horse or mule. Now they are connected by asphalt.
Beyond the frontier, the Chinese improvements include laying asphalt on a historic highway across the region of Aksai Chin, which is claimed by India. The construction of the Xinjiang-Tibet national highway 50 years ago shocked India and contributed to the 1962 war.
Chinas rails are improving, too: Beijing opened a train line from Tibet to the region in 2006, and an extension is planned into a prefecture bordering Arunachal.
In a 2010 cable released by Wikileaks, a U.S. diplomat concluded that infrastructure development in Lhoka prefecture, which according to China includes Tawang, was in part to prepare a rear base should a border clash arise.
For years, India deliberately neglected infrastructure in Arunachal Pradesh, partly so it could act as a natural buffer against any Chinese invasion. That policy was dropped when the extent of development on Chinas side became clear.
In 2008, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh made his first trip to Arunachal and promised $4 billion to build a 1,700-kilometer highway joining the valleys of the state as well as a train line connecting to New Delhi. These would also make troop movements easier.
Around the same time, former army chief Gen. J.J. Singh was appointed governor of the state and is ramping up infrastructure, power and telecom projects.
Never before in the history of this region has such a massive development programme been conducted here, he said, sipping tea at his residence.
Singh, who spent much of his army career in Arunachal, said
India and China both realise there is enough place and space for both of us to develop. A very mature and pragmatic approach is being taken by both.
But despite 15 rounds of high-level talks, the border issue looks as knotty as ever. Indian media often whip up anger at Chinese border incursions, played down by both governments as a natural result of differing perceptions of where the border lies. Indias defence minister told parliament 500 incursions have been reported in the last two years.
Unable to match Chinas transport network, Indias focus is now on maintaining more troops close to the border.
India struggles to build up infrastructure, said Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who has written extensively on the India-China relationship. They have been trying to do this for the past six or seven years now, and it is progressing far more slowly than they would like. What they have done in the interim is build up the troop strength.
COURTING THE LAMAS
One of main irritants in India-China relations, and a key part of Chinas claim to Arunachal, is Tibetan Buddhism. Beijing claims a centuries-old sovereignty over Arunachal and the rest of the Himalayan region.
India hosts the Dalai Lama and his Tibetan government-in-exile. When the Dalai Lama fled Chinese rule in Tibet in 1959, his first stop was the Buddhist monastery in the Arunachal town of Tawang near the border. Three years later, China occupied the fortress-like hilltop monastery in the 1962 war before withdrawing to the current lines.
In the 17th century, Tawang district was the birthplace of the sixth Dalai Lama. Deified as his latest incarnation, the current Dalai Lama visited the monastery in 2009 and has hinted his next reincarnation will be born in India. Some say in Tawang.
Tibetan Buddhists see the Dalai Lama as a living god; China sees him as a separatist threat. Many in the Indian security community worry that instability in Tibet after his death could endanger India.
So, New Delhi is wooing the locals. The intermingling of the Indian army and the Tawang monks is striking. War memorials on the road are built in the style of Tibetan Buddhist stupas, with prayer wheels and flags. Soldiers frequently visit the temple, and advise the lamas about troop movements and developments on the border.
Lobsang Thapke, a senior lama at the monastery, says Indias troop buildup has made the monks feel safe, but that India was far from matching Chinas road-building prowess.
From our side, we have to go through a lot of difficulty, he said in a carpeted room above the main hall, where child monks chanted morning prayers. They (India) have not black-topped. Gravelling has not been done.
The Indian footprint here isnt always welcome. Indias new wealth is seen in the multi-storey hotels mushrooming between traditional wood-and-stone houses in town, and new Fords and Hyundais on the hilly streets.
But anger is rising about a lack of jobs and perceptions that government corruption is rampant. Student movements have organised strikes in the state capital.
Hotel worker Dorjee Leto says educated young people like himself feel forgotten by India. There is almost no mobile phone coverage, power cuts that last days, and just that long muddy road to the outside world.
Anxiety over China, however, outweighs the irritation with India, says Leto, who like most in Tawang is a follower of Tibetan Buddhism.
Its a fear, because already China has annexed Tibet. We feel part of India, we are used to India, he said.
http://http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/22/world/la-fg-india-toilets22-2010mar22
Reporting from Kolkata, India She grew up in a dusty West Bengal village, where no one had access to toilets. Most of the female villagers headed to a particular field. But it was a bit of a walk and often required asking another woman to help shield you from lecherous men.
Boko, a 35-year-old woman with a yellow sari and a big smile, now sweeps floors at a truck stop with toilets. It's a big improvement, says the woman, who identified herself only by her first name.
A United Nations report released March 15 says that despite progress in the last two decades, 2.4 billion people around the world still lack access to basic sanitary facilities -- including an estimated 638 million in India alone.
Lacking access to a toilet, something most people in the developed world don't think about, involves more than just embarrassment and inconvenience. It's also a significant health hazard. Globally, about 1.5 million children die each year as a result of a lack of water, sanitation and hygiene, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children's agency.
"We go to the toilet on the street," said Basarat Ansari, 30, a homeless laborer working in a ritzy Kolkata neighborhood. "I know other people have to walk in it. But you don't have much choice if you have to go."
Women often have a harder time.
Chandana Das, 40, sat cooking a curry on a Kolkata street where she has lived for years. Nearby, a string of men used a green tiled urinal in open view.
"Men can go over there, but we can't very well do that," Das said. "I'll walk several blocks to a toilet at the market. You have to pay, but what can you do?"
Up to 10% of Kolkata's population lives on the street or in shantytowns -- including rickshaw pullers, migrants from neighboring states and illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. That means many people end up sleeping near where someone else has defecated a few hours earlier.
An estimated three dozen civic groups and neighborhood committees offer public toilets -- only enough so that there are about two per square mile in a teeming city of 15 million.
One such group, Sulabh International, operates 7,500 toilets across the country, in nearly every Indian state, and employs 50,000 people. But founder Bindeshwar Pathak said Sulabh's effort is "just like a peanut," compared with India's needs, which he estimates at 1 million public toilets and 120 million household toilets.
Though the problem in cities is often more acute, globally 70% of those without toilets live in rural areas.
In India, parents often won't allow their daughters who have reached puberty to attend rural schools that lack toilets, fearing they will be molested, which would ruin their chances of attracting a suitor. That makes toilets a linchpin in efforts to improve women's status.
Some blame the state for the dearth of public facilities.
"If officials spent even 10% of our tax money where they should, we'd be a far more developed country," said Gourav Ghosh, 24, a hotel developer in Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta. "But it seeps away from corruption. Before an election, the toilets are maintained. Afterwards, it's back to usual -- ***** and disrepair. Inevitably, it's poor people who suffer."
Others blame a lack of civic pride. It's not unusual to see men, including well-dressed businessmen, urinating on a wall just beside a public toilet to avoid the smell and ***** inside.
New Delhi has vowed to clean up in time for the Commonwealth Games it is hosting this fall. City officials are encouraging companies to build 250 new toilet facilities-- "fully air-conditioned, with flowerpots and large mirrors" -- around the capital.
"We are all set to usher in a toilet revolution in the city," Amiya Chandra, head of the city department handling the project, told the media at the launch.
The city has suggested that restaurant companies fund construction in order to attract customers into adjoining eateries or, as news website Mid-Day.com explained: "Have a full meal inside without pinching your nose."
Chandra said the project promised to lend an artistic flair to India's capital.
"Presently, the city of Delhi resembles a stinking toilet," he said, "but we are trying hard to make toilets an aesthetic experience."
http://http://www.rediff.com/business/slide-show/slide-show-1-column-how-far-is-india-behind-china/20120123.htm
The debate in a small group earlier this week was about how far India is behind China. The quick numbers tossed out varied all the way from 10 to 25 years and more.
Figuring out the gap between the two "rising giants of Asia" is in fact an instructive study.
For instance, China's GDP in 2011 was $6.99 trillion, or nearly four times India's $1.84 trillion.
If the Indian economy were to grow at an annual average of 7.8 per cent (the rate for the past decade), it would take 18 years to get to China's current size. If growth were to accelerate to nine per cent, it would still take 15 years.
Could India have avoided falling so far behind China?
After all, when China began its Four Modernisations in 1978, the two economies were of roughly the same size ($145-148 billion).
Even in 1991, when India began its reforms, China's economy was only 40 per cent bigger than India's $268 billion.
The answer is that, in many ways, India in 1991 was already two decades and more behind China on key indicators, and it has not closed the gap.
For instance, China's literacy rate in 1991 was 78 per cent, whereas India's was just 52 per cent.
Even today, India's literacy rate, at 74 per cent, is short of where China's was in 1991; meanwhile, China has moved ahead to 94 per cent literacy.
Ditto with life expectancy; China's in 1991 was 70 years.
Twenty years later, India had a tally of only 64 years. Of course, China's life expectancy has improved slowly in the last two decades, and is at 73; still, it will take India two decades and more to get to that figure.
Some seemingly large gaps might be closed more quickly. Thus, China's goods exports are about six times India's.
However, India's exports have multiplied nearly seven-fold in the last decade (from $43.8 billion to an expected $300 billion this year), so it could conceivably replicate China's current export figure in less than 10 years.
No such hope can be applied to industry, where too China's is more than six times India's.
Move to research, and China has a citation index that is twice as good as India's.
In the space programme, China sent its first man into space in 2003; India hopes to do it in 2015, but is likely to take longer.
As for infrastructure, China has more than 30,000 km of expressways on which traffic speeds go up to 120 kmph; India has a few hundred kilometres.
China has a whole inter-city network of high-speed trains, five times as many Internet users, and nearly a million MW of power generation capacity.
India has only fractionally increased its train speeds since the first Rajdhani Express of 1969, and even if the country doubles power generation capacity every decade, starting from 150,000 MW in 2010, it will take more than a quarter century to get to where China is today.
As for agriculture, China applies fully three times the fertiliser per arable hectare that India does.
The smallest gap is in the mobile phone population. And the largest gap perhaps in the quality of political leadership - China is able to produce a new crop of top-rung leaders every decade, in Beijing and in the provinces and large cities, whereas India's political parties offer little beyond an upper crust.
China's project execution is of course in a league of its own. As for sport, India got one gold medal in the last Olympics, China got 51.
The cold message to all Indians: stop talking of the two countries in the same breath, and dump the "Chindia" coinage.
For why does India not bracket itself with Iran, whose economic size in relation to India (1:4) is broadly the same as India's to China?
My point is here that India lags behind in all sectors with China and even some with Pakistan but still obsesses about China? Even when China is about 40 years ahead of India?
