Competence building in complex systems in the developing countries: the case of satellite building in India

Since 1975, India has built 25 satellites under the satellite programme. By judicially combining the foreign technological imports and local knowledge, India appears to have acquired a high level of capability to build very complex and world-class satellites for remote sensing and communications. This paper analyses the process of technological learning in satellite building in India. Particularly, it illustrates the role of foreign imports and the local efforts at different phases during this process. This paper demonstrates that achieving the goal of technological self-reliance in a developing country like India, particularly in a complex area like satellite systems, is unlikely to be possible without significant foreign imports in the formative period. It also demonstrates that without strong indigenous effort India would not have reached threshold capability in the accumulative phase. Foreign imports and local knowledge appears to have played a complementary role in competence building in satellite technology in India

An assessment of nuclear and missile developments in South Asia.

Since conducting nuclear tests in 1998, both India and Pakistan have decided to build a “minimum nuclear deterrence”, replacing the policy of “non-weaponized nuclear deterrence”, followed since 1970s. Both countries appear to have accelerated their nuclear and missile programmes, particularly since 2001, while the international attention has been focused elsewhere such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Free from intensive international scrutiny, India and Pakistan continued to develop, test and deploy different types of ballistic missiles. The nuclear and missile developments in South Asia are gaining greater momentum rather than slowing down and India and Pakistan appear to be in danger of being trapped into a costly strategic arms race. This paper discusses various nuclear and missile developments in India and Pakistan and their technological capabilities. It also analyses the likely medium and long-term nuclear and missile developments or trends in South Asia and their implications for regional and global security, particularly from the view of nuclear and missile non-proliferation

The impact of export controls on indigenous technology development: the case of India’s space programme.

The timing of export controls and the state of technological capability of a ‘target’ country at a given time appear to determine the degree of impact of export controls on a ‘target’ country. The impact is likely to be much greater in the formative phase than in the accumulative phase of technology accumulation. Also, the export controls, instead of hampering, could provide an incentive for a strong indigenous effort in building capabilities, eventually making a ‘target country more independent and more immune to export controls. India’s space programme makes an interesting case study of the impact of export controls on capability building, as India has been one of the targets for export control regimes. The technology developments in India’s space programme suggests that the export controls have caused only small delays and did not affect the programme seriously. It appears that the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) came into force too late to have a serious adverse impact on India, as India has already attained threshold capabilities. It also appears that export controls have forced India to plan and strategically manage indigenous technology development to overcome problems posed by these controls

RVB gauge theory and the Topological degeneracy in the Honeycomb Kitaev model

We relate the Z$_2$ gauge theory formalism of the Kitaev model to the SU(2) gauge theory of the resonating valence bond (RVB) physics. Further, we reformulate a known Jordan-Wigner transformation of Kitaev model on a torus in a general way that shows that it can be thought of as a Z$_2$ gauge fixing procedure. The conserved quantities simplify in terms of the gauge invariant Jordan-Wigner fermions, enabling us to construct exact eigen states and calculate physical quantities. We calculate the fermionic spectrum for flux free sector for different gauge field configurations and show that the ground state is four-fold degenerate on a torus in thermodynamic limit. Further on a torus we construct four mutually anti-commuting operators which enable us to prove that all eigenstates of this model are four fold degenerate in thermodynamic limit.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figures. Added affiliation and a new section, 'Acknowledgements'.Typos correcte

Exact results for spin dynamics and fractionization in the Kitaev Model

We present certain exact analytical results for dynamical spin correlation functions in the Kitaev Model. It is the first result of its kind in non-trivial quantum spin models. The result is also novel: in spite of presence of gapless propagating Majorana fermion excitations, dynamical two spin correlation functions are identically zero beyond nearest neighbor separation, showing existence of a gapless but short range spin liquid. An unusual, \emph{all energy scale fractionization}of a spin -flip quanta, into two infinitely massive $\pi$-fluxes and a dynamical Majorana fermion, is shown to occur. As the Kitaev Model exemplifies topological quantum computation, our result presents new insights into qubit dynamics and generation of topological excitations.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. Typose corrected, figure made better, clarifying statements and references adde

The impact of the national innovation systems on the flow and benefits of foreign direct investment to national economics.

In the increasingly globalising economy, the flow of foreign direct investment(FDI) is seen as an important source for achieving greater and faster economic growth, particularly in the emerging market economies and other developing countries. Studies on FDI focus on different aspects such as impact of FDI on economic growth, its linkages to foreign trade, its contribution to technology diffusion and human capital formation in the local economy, its social and environmental impacts on host countries, the factors that determine different level of flow of FDI to different countries, the link between FDI and international production, trade and technology development. Such studies mainly highlighted that there are benefits as well as costs from FDI for the host countries (e.g. OECD, 2002; Wei, 2005; Chakraborty and Basu, 2002; Rajan, 2005). The benefits include technology spillovers, human capital formation, international trade integration, competitive environment, and enterprise development, and so on. The costs include balance of payment problems due to repatriation of profit, failure to link with local communities, negative impact on local environment, social destabilisation due to rapid commercialisation, impact on competition in national market, host country failing to benefit from technology and know how transfer, and loss of political sovereignty. Although it is found that the overall benefits are greater than costs, it is pointed out that benefits of FDI are not automatic, particularly for developing countries. It is suggested that these countries need to pursue appropriate policy regimes and should have “a basic level of development”. Various studies suggest that not only the volume and nature of FDI flow varies greatly across the emerging and less developed economies, but also their ability to absorb and benefit from them and how effectively they use FDI to enhance their national productive systems varies greatly. In this paper we would argue that this capacity is directly related to the degree of functioning of an economy’s national innovation system. If FDI is one key route for the introduction of knowledge, technology or innovation that is new to a national economy, it matters a lot how the network of institutions, ideas, policies, strategies, agents and incentives are organised, and work in tandem with logic and coherence and thus communicate and interact effectively to bring transformation. How well the latter are organised, interfacing the elements of the social-economic, productive and knowledge, intersectoralising the sectors and forging interdependent agents and structures is a question of the type of national innovation system (NIS) in place. FDI is not negative or positive a priori. Its role as positive or negative should emerge in relation to specific contexts and requires contextualising it within given national systems of innovation. And we propose that the weakness or strength of the system of innovation influences whether FDI’s contribution is negative or positive. A study of FDI in relation to how different national systems with varied capacities and characteristics or the strengths and weaknesses inherent in their NIS deal and cope with FDI can yield fresh policy insight on the type of changes that must take priority to benefit from flows of FDI. In this paper we analyse the nature of the flow of FDI in some selected emerging market economies such as China, India, South Africa and few smaller economies and its impact on these national economies. We analyse the volume, nature and characteristics of the FDI inflow in these countries and whether and how NIS has shaped the flow and the impact of FDI on these economies. We focus on the issue of managing and absorbing FDI to enhance national productive systems rather than whether FDI is positive or negative