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Due to skyrocketing rice prices, Liberians are switching to pasta and learning how to twirl spaghetti on a fork. In India, the government has restricted rice exports, and moms are choosing between eating and paying for their children's schooling. Meanwhile in the United States, Wal-Mart's Sam's Club warehouse stores are limiting the sale of 20-pound (9 kg) bags of jasmine, basmati, and long-grain white rice to four per customer.

In the developed world, food shortages might be overhyped. The head of the California Rice Commission told Reuters, "Bottom line, there is no rice shortage in the United States. We have supplies." Plus, how many Americans buy 80 pounds of rice per shopping trip? (Apparently, it's restaurant owners and small-business owners who typically buy in bulk.)

But for people in developing countries, outrageous food prices and shortages are a serious reality. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, which provides food aid to the needy, told FP in this week's Seven Questions, "This is a silent tsunami." Video, audio, and prepared remarks from her recent talk on global food insecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies is also available here.

By the way, if you want to help hungry people get rice, play the Free Rice vocabulary game.

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Tulsi Tanti, one India's most inspiring "green" entrepreneurs and now one of the world's richest people (worth $3 billion), is facing stiff challenges with his wind power company that could either lead to its massive failure, or its unbridled success. Tanti is hailed as one of India's most globally successful businessmen in the vein of Ratan Tata and Lakshmi Mittal -- but his company is one of the few that has given India the potential to be a worldwide leader in alternative energy.

But now Suzlon Energy, which Tanti founded and now serves as chairman and managing director for, confronts two main challenges, according to Friday's Wall Street Journal. First, the 144-foot-long windmill blades the company has sold to energy firms including California's Edison Mission Energy have begun to split in some locations, and Suzlon has had to recall 1,251 blades. That represents the majority of blades the company has sold in the United States, and a cost of at least $30 million to the company to repair the cracked blades and reinforce the rest.

The second major challenge for Suzlon is gaining access to the wind industry's most advanced technology. Suzlon is actually in a prime position to do so through its 33.6 percent ownership stake in the innovative German turbine manufacturer, REpower. The problem for Suzlon, however, is that under  German law, REpower can consider Suzlon a "competitor" since it does not own a majority of the company. It is therefore not obliged to transfer its blueprints to Suzlon; Suzlon would need to buy out the minority shareholders. And REpower is refusing to share the technology at present in order to protect the interests of those minority shareholders.

Nonetheless, it's unlikely that these setbacks spell major trouble for Suzlon. As of late last year, the firm had a $3.5 billion order backlog, and wind power demand in general has been growing significantly. With its green credentials and the fact that oil is continuing to hit record highs, wind power is set to remain popular. Moreover, Suzlon has withstood plenty of other challenges since its founding in 1995: the withdrawal of tax breaks in India, competition with major Western companies to acquire other foreign firms, and overseas expansion -- including cracking into the U.S. and Chinese energy markets. Suzlon's annual sales amount to $1.8 billion, and its profits are growing. The WSJ reports that it probably won't be able to make a tender offer for REpower until 2009. Even so, given Suzlon's history I'm expecting the deal to go through, and for Tanti to look back on these problems as minor glitches. And if you live in the United States, don't be surprised if part of your electricity payments soon end up in Suzlon's coffers.

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India's foreign minister has given the Dalai Lama, who heads the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala in northern India, a warning: Don't mess up our relationship with China. Here's Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Indian TV:

India will continue to offer [the Dalai Lama] all hospitality, but during his stay in India, they should not do any political activity, any action that can adversely affect relations between India and China".

Tibet expert Robert Barnett recently told FP that Delhi is increasingly distancing itself from the Tibetans in order to solidify its ties with Beijing.

FP: Will India find it harder to tolerate the Tibetan government in exile?

RB: India is clearly moving in the direction of distancing itself from the exiles. Some people think it's preparing for the death of the Dalai Lama, and then it will distance itself even more. There were indications of a sea change after the Dalai Lama received the Congressional Gold Medal in America last October. The Indians issued an order, presumably under pressure from China, that their cabinet ministers were not allowed to meet him or receive him upon his return. This was seen as very unusual. I don't want to suggest some major realignment, but the indications are very much that India is maintaining ambiguity but showing that it largely wants to engage with China. That said, it hasn't taken any irreversible steps yet in terms of the Tibetans.

Another question to my mind is, What happens to Dharamsala when the Dalai Lama dies? What's received little analysis in recent weeks is Beijing's long-term strategy of waiting out the Dalai Lama in order to control his succession. Traditionally, Tibetan Buddhism's No.2 figure, the Panchen Lama, helps determine the next Dalai Lama, believed to be a reincarnation of the former. But the Panchen Lama named by the Dalai Lama in 1995 was arrested by the Chinese and hasn't been seen since (he was 6 years old at the time of his arrest). China then named its own Panchen Lama, a teenager who just so happens to be a big fan of Chinese nationalism. How that succession issue shakes out will be of enormous importance, and how China handles it will determine to what extent the recent protests are a sign of things to come.

MANPREET ROMANA/AFP/Getty Images

Looks like the United States isn't the only country that has security problems at its embassies:

A group of Tibetans on Friday barged into the high-security Chinese Embassy, agitating against the crackdown on pro-independence protesters in Lhasa by Chinese authorities.

Waving the Tibetan flag and draped in banners carrying anti-China messages such as "Boycott Beijing Olympics," about 20 Tibetan students, including some women, scaled the walls of the embassy in the high-security Chanakyapuri area, taking the security personnel by surprise.

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India's Tata Motors has just recieved a $3 billion loan from Citigroup and JP Morgan that will likely to be used to purchase luxury British auto brands Jaguar and Landrover. Tata has been in acquisition talks with Ford about the two brands since at least the beginning of the year, and the deal is now expected to be finalized around the Mar. 26.

If Tata's bid succeeds, the company would become the producer of the world's cheapest car, the $2,500 Nano, and some of its most expensive. The paradox raises the question -- will Tata be able to cut costs for its new luxury brands, whose troubles are well-known? Tata's chairman has already ruled out shifting the production of Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles from Britain to cheaper locations, though Wharton's John Paul MacDuffie believes Tata could restore the brands to profitability through other means.

For an India that was ruled by Britain for nearly ninety years, Tata's purchase will starkly reinforce the arrival of the "post-colonial" moment. As MacDuffie explains, "there might be a certain sense of pride in acquiring the 'Jewel in the Crown'." Like Tata's previous acquisition of British steelmaker Corus and teamaker Tetley, and India's United Breweries Group's purchase of Scottish whisky distiller Whyte & Mackay, Tata's acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover would symbolize yet another "post-colonial table turn."

Tata is well aware of the potential blow to British pride. "These brands will continue to belong to Britain," Chairman Ratan Tata has assured. Except that now, they will be owned by an Indian company.

MANAN VATSYAYANA/AFP/Getty Images

Major international events often impose enormous burdens on poor and minority communities. Roughly 1.5 million people, for instance, will be displaced by the Beijing Olympics. For the 1988 Summer Games in Seoul, South Korea forcibly evicted 720,000 people while the homeless population was detained in the city's outskirts. The 1996 Atlanta Games uprooted about 30,000 poor residents, and Sydney, Athens, and other Olympic cities witnessed similar social dislocations. But New Delhi has taken its "preparations" for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, kind of a mini-Olympics involving current and former British colonies, a step further: by arresting and imprisoning beggars.

Delhi's Social Welfare Department is organizing "cleanup operations," the Christian Science Monitor reports:

Every morning, it dispatches nine vans from its Beggar Raid Team. Each carries three plainclothes men, who scan the crowded streets of bullock carts, cows, motorbikes, cycle rickshaws, newspaper hawkers, and stray dogs for ragged people pleading for money.

"Since the end of last year, we've been told to increase the numbers we arrest," says Anand Pandey, a civil servant known as a "raid officer" ...

Warrants are not necessary for arresting beggars. Once picked up, they are tried in the city's Beggars' Court. Those whom Mr. Pandey calls "first-time offenders" often go free with a warning. Others are incarcerated until friends or family scrape together the money to pay their bail of about 3,000 rupees (about $75). Many are locked up in "beggars' homes" – dedicated jails – for a minimum of one year and a maximum of 10, the latter being the same penalty given for violent robberies. If they are "blind, a cripple or otherwise incurably helpless," according to the law, beggars can be locked up for life.

The city is also creating a "beggar database" to hold the photographs and fingerprints of offending beggars, so that "habitual" panhandlers can be convicted more easily. Already, during the past year, 2,537 beggars have been arrested and 1,133 convicted. Many of the city's beggars are elderly, ill, or amputees, and have little chance of finding regular work.

Let's face it, the city is arresting and locking up these beggars for no reason other than that they are poor. "Many of these people have no option but to beg. To arrest them without even providing the infrastructure that guarantees them the most basic needs is appalling," Anand Kumar, a human rights lawyer in New Delhi, told the Monitor. With such cruel and regressive attitudes toward the poor, New Delhi's efforts to portray itself as a modern "world-class city" for the Commonwealth Games are doomed to fail -- at least in the eyes of human-rights campaigners around the world.

Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov seems mighty pleased with himself for negotiating a mutibillion-dollar nuclear energy deal with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh:

PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images

Got your own suggested caption for this photo? Send us your one-liners and we'll print the best one below.

Indonesia:

Palm oil surged to a record on speculation supplies for food and alternative fuel will be limited after Indonesia, the world's biggest producer, announced it would raise export taxes if prices climb further.

India:

No sooner did Indonesia signal higher export taxes on palm oil than India said it may cut import duty.

The moves by the two governments highlight the struggle to contain living costs for their 1.3 billion people. Prices of palm oil and its rival soybean oil hit records today.

Pakistan: 

Prices of edible oil may spiral out of control in coming days because of an increase in the price of palm oil in the international market, triggered by extraordinary Chinese purchases. More than half (56 per cent) of Pakistan's cooking oil and ghee are made from palm oil.

For more on what's behind this trend, check out the new column by FP editor in chief Moisés Naím, "Can the world afford a middle class?" His answer: Probably, but it's going to be painful and have unpredictable, wide-ranging effects.

If you're a man in the Banda district of India who beats your wife, demands more dowry, or otherwise mistreats women, you'd better watch out. A posse of vigilante women clad in pink saris may soon come after you, and it's going to be ugly.

The "Gulabi Gang" (Pink Gang) uses sticks (lathis) and cricket bats to "teach erring men a lesson." In one instance, they chased a woman's abusive, alcoholic husband into a sugarcane field and sorely thrashed him. They also go after corrupt government officials. Last year, they stormed a police station after cops refused to register the case of a low-caste man simply because of his social standing.

This area of India, in the state of Uttar Pradesh (the same state from which the late "bandit queen" Phoolan Devi hailed), is notorious for its ill-treatment of women and people of lower castes. Only 24 percent of women can read (compared with 50 percent of men), domestic violence is rampant, and there are just 846 females per 1,000 males (compared with the state's average of 879). Bonded labor (a.k.a. slavery) is common, lower-caste children face open discrimination at school, and government officials are corrupt.

Given these circumstances, a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. Gulabi Gang founder Sampat Pal Devi, who was married off at age 9 and had her first child at 13, says:

Nobody comes to our help in these parts. The officials and police are corrupt and anti-poor. So sometimes we have to take the law into our own hands. At other times, we prefer to shame the wrongdoers. But we're not a gang in the usual sense of the term. We're a gang for justice.

Until the rule of law can be established, it looks like justice will be have to administered via grrrl power.

PRAKASH SINGH/AFP/Getty Images

In booming India, newspaper and magazine sales have been skyrocketing. Newspaper circulation was up 54 percent from 2001 to 2006, along with an 85 percent increase in advertising revenue.

Unfortunately, one enterprising magazine has been struggling. Tehelka, which FP featured in a Global Newsstand article last year, isn't getting the advertising rupees it needs to stay afloat. The weekly publication, which calls itself "Free.Fair.Fearless," has gained fame for bold undercover investigative reporting that has exposed government corruption. For example, journalists with hidden cameras posed as defense contractors and gave cash bribes to politicians and military officials. The defense minister had to resign as a result (though he was later reinstated).

But challenging the powers-that-be doesn't exactly reel in investors. Editor in chief Tarun Tejpal, who recently launched a Hindi-language Web site of the English-language magazine, says, "There's a certain reluctance to be associated with us because we are seen as people who create trouble and get into the wrong side of money and power."

Part of the problem, too, may be that as India booms, people want more upbeat, "feel-good" news. "The serious part of journalism is taking a back seat. The entertainment journalism is at the front," says a consulting editor for the Indian Press Agency. Anil Dharker, a media critic and columnist, may sum it up best by saying:

Psychologically, Indians are on such a high with the economy booming. They are in no mood to hear bad news. And that's what Tehelka offers.

PLoS Medicine

How do you provide healthcare to citizens in a country where nearly 75 percent of the population lives in the country, and more than 75 percent of the country's doctors live in cities? India's answer: telemedicine.

The Indian government has been investing in the technology to make healthcare accessible and affordable for the country's rural population, according to The Lancet. Telemedicine works like a regular medical consultation—except the doctor is on a computer screen peering through a webcam, and the patient's vitals are monitored by traditional equipment such as stethoscopes hooked up to computers (a more precise explanation can be found here and here). Sometimes a general physician is present, but the specialist reading and interpreting the information is located remotely.

The country's first telemedicine center was established in the state of Andhra Pradesh in 2000, and since then many analysts have come to believe that telemedicine "could be the future for health care in India." Today, there are about 500 telemedicine centers across the country, linked to about 50 specialist hospitals. So far the centers have provided "teleconsultations" to an estimated 150,000 patients—a drop in the ocean in a country of more than 1 billion. According to anecdotal accounts, however, initial skepticism about "impersonal" health consultations is waning and patients who have been treated through telemedicine appear satisfied with the care. Meanwhile, public-private partnerships are continuing to expand the size and the scope of telemedicine facilities.

Telemedicine, like the use of cellphones for health, could be a revolutionary step in medical provision for the poor. Rural residents won't need to travel as great a distance in order to access sophisticated medical treatment, and doctors won't need to move to rural areas. As of now, telemedicine consultations cost around $22—still beyond the reach of most Indians. But the government is promising to provide the consultations free of charge for the poor, though it's not clear if this is entirely feasible since many clinics are operated privately.

But as revolutionary as it might be, the growth of long-distance medicine raises some questions about accountability. What happens if a patient is misdiagnosed, or sent away with a clean bill of health when there is actually an underlying problem? Can anyone fairly be held responsible? Nonetheless, it does seem like the benefits at the moment outweigh the risks. As one surgeon and hospital director argues:

In terms of disease management, there is [a] 99% possibility that the person who is unwell does not require [an] operation. If you don't operate you don't need to touch the patient. And if you don't need to touch the patient, you don't need to be there.

Come to think of it, there's no reason to think Indian specialists and doctors couldn't start treating patients in this manner who hail from anywhere in the world, including the United States. Indeed, Indian doctors are already providing diagnostic interpretation of radiological images, including X-rays, CTs and MRIs, for American patients from hospitals in places as far away as Bangalore.

Today India's Tata Motors unveiled the $2,500 Tata Nano, a tiny four-door "People's Car." Some industry analysts say it could revolutionize Indian society the way the Ford Model T did in the United States 100 years ago. Unsurprisingly, Thomas Friedman has already warned Indians not to follow the first world and turn their country into one filled with even more traffic congestion and air pollution. We'll have to wait and see how many takers there are for the Nano, but meanwhile, here's a Nano vs. Model T comparison:

Introductory Price	$2,500	$850 (about $19,000 in 2006)
Number of cylinders	2	4
Horsepower	33	20
Top speed	60 mph (97 km per hour)	45 mph (72 km per hour)
Fuel economy	50 miles per gallon (21 km per liter)	13-21 miles per gallon (5.5-9 km per liter)
Air conditioning	No	No
Power steering	No	No
Windshield wiper	Just 1	A vacuum-powered wiper could be added to the driver's side of the 1926 model for $3.50

Photos: RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images; INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images

The Writers Guild of America strike has been going on for nine long weeks and one day now, and so far there's no end in sight. True, David Letterman has been back on the air for a few days with writers, and Jay Leno without. And fake news stalwarts Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert were back on last night, with mixed results. (My verdict? Stewart: meh. Colbert: in fine form.) But this Sunday's Golden Globes awards show ceremony has been reduced to a news conference, and despite the premieres of several mid-season TV shows, fresh content is quickly running out.

The Writers Guild has created a series of ads called "Speechless" as part of their campaign to get their plight noticed. In the first spot, we see a depiction of what might happen if the strike continued indefinitely. What if the writers' jobs were sent to India?

Last month, Christine noted the increase in "inverted sex tourism": wealthy foreign women heading to poor countries (for instance, Kenya) to purchase sex from younger and poorer men. But a BBC report on Kolkata in India reveals that it's not just rich foreign women who prey on male prostitutes. Indian women of means are also getting into the act:

[Male gigolos] offer some insight into the changing sexual mores of a growing number of Indian women who are ready to spend money on buying sex in a traditionally conservative society.

It is hardly a easy job to do - in the absence of male brothels, gigolos like Samrat cruise after dusk for prospective clients, mainly upper or middle-class and rich women who usually drive in their cars with dark tinted windows.

"It is not all fun and games as people think. Just as female sex workers face violence and get cheated, we face such situations from time to time too," says the son of a bank worker, who joined the sex trade after a short stint as an employee with a multi-national pharmaceutical firm in the capital, Delhi.

"I have often not been paid by clients, and when I have protested, they have threatened me with telling the police that I tried to rape them. And there are clients who love to stub out burning cigarettes on our bodies. These days I have begun to charge for a cigarette burn - 500 rupees ($11) per stub," he says.

As with female sex workers, technology such as mobile phones and the Internet has helped facilitate business. The men usually receive upwards of 1,000 rupees ($25) an hour from their clients, and when work from female clients slows, many of these workers sell sex to other men. Thankfully, the "gigolos," who constitute one of the highest risk groups for HIV/AIDS contraction, are beginning to bond together to speak out for HIV prevention. Whether that will be enough to curb the spread of the virus, of course, remains to be seen.

RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images

Are you an unemployed youth in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh? If so, the government may have a job for you: monkey sterilizer. 

The state has become so overrun with monkeys that curbing them became a major electoral issue last month. On Thursday, the chief minister unveiled a solution that would solve two problems—the monkey menace and youth unemployment—at once: Train young people to capture and sterilize marauding wild monkeys. Or as the state's press release puts it, "lazer [sic] sterilization of the monkeys on war footing."

This monkey madness probably sounds wacky to those who don't live near monkey habitats, but it may well be a pragmatic solution to a vexing problem. For devout Hindus and conservationists who don't want monkeys to be killed, for instance, sterilization might be more benign. And let's not forget that in India, the monkey population is out of control. Monkeys ravage farmers' crops and even attack people such as New Delhi's deputy mayor, who fell off his balcony and died while fighting off a gang of monkeys last October.

Admittedly, part of the problem is us humans: We're encroaching on monkey territory and taking away their habitat. To that end, Himachal Pradesh is also considering developing dedicated wildlife preserves for monkeys. (Puerto Rico, by the way, is simply shipping theirs to Florida.)

In all, the monkey eradication plan doesn't sound as bizarre once all the hype is stripped away: Train young adults to capture, enumerate, tag, and sterilize monkeys.

Of course, what happens if novice sterilizers botch a case? One dissenting conservationist asked:

Can you imagine what having badly sterilized monkeys running around will do to the levels of aggression?

Perhaps there's nothing to worry about. According to Himachal Pradesh's press release, the young adults are only going to be assisting "experts" in carrying out the project. Presumably, the experts know how to wield a sterilization "lazer."

NARINDER NANU/AFP/Getty

On January 1, 2008, amid all the turmoil resulting from the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazhir Bhutto, Pakistan and India quietly exchanged detailed data on the locations of their nuclear facilities. Intended as a confidence-building measure, this exchange has been happening annually since 1992, under the terms of the Agreement on the Prohibition of Attack Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities.

The agreement has held through both countries' nuclear tests in 1998, a standoff over Kashmir in 2001, and numerous terrorist provocations, so it should not be too surprising that the exchange occurred successfully in the midst of the current tension in the region. The fact that it occurred again, however, does indicate that the country’s troubles have not affected the Army—historically the strongest institution in Pakistan and the backbone of the government—enough to prevent it from keeping its international obligations.

While this exchange is a pretty thin reed with which to divine the current state of Pakistan’s government, nuclear confidence-building measures like this have a long and relatively successful history. The two Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (STARTs) involved the exchange of copious amounts of data between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (and later Russia), in order to build confidence and allow nuclear arsenals to shrink. Today, with START II about to expire and no renewal in sight, many experts believe we are losing a critical tool for maintaining confidence between Russia and the United States.

The Indo-Pakistani information exchange is all the more significant because of the sensitivity of the data provided. Pakistan, for instance, has been unwilling to provide the United States with the locations of its critical nuclear sites, which has hindered U.S. attempts to help improve the security of Pakistani nuclear weapons. Let's hope more disclosures of sensitive information between India and Pakistan can further defuse tensions in the future.

Back in August, Passport looked at Hollywood's growing obsession with Bollywood and decided that the U.S. film industry was betting on a safe horse in trying to join Bollywood rather than beat it. But with the early results from the first major Hollywood Hindi film co-produced by Sony Pictures out, it appears that it may not be so easy for Hollywood to crack the Indian film market.

The Financial Times declared that "Sony's first foray into Bollywood flops." Mumbai-based producer and director Mahesh Bhatt gave this take on what went wrong:

I hope it will function as a wake-up call to investors in Hollywood.... You may have your marketing network, you may have your inexhaustible financial resources, but you need to get a sense of the palate of the Bollywood consumer."

Analysts believe that Saawariya, the Sony film, primarily failed because it performed poorly against Om Shanti Om, a conventional Bollywood blockbuster starring the omnipresent Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan. Both movies were released in November during the Indian holiday of Diwali, and according to an Indian box office tracking site, Saawariya has grossed just Rs24,81,00,000 ($6.27 million) compared to Om Shanti Om's Rs83,63,00,000 ($21.15 million). Film buffs were also deeply disappointed with the entertainment value of Saawariya, as a number of Bollywood blogs and gossip websites revealed.

I think it's too early to sound the death knells for Hollywood in Bollywood, however, just because Sony took a risk that didn't pay off. Saawariya was an unconventional and dark Bollywood film, adapted from Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel White Nights. It didn't showcase an all-star cast in that it featured two debut actors, and was directed by acclaimed but alternative film director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. Plus, the film still made a decent profit, which will increase further through DVD sales and TV rights.

Upcoming Hollywood/Bollywood films such as Roadside Romeo and Made in China are also risky, non-traditional Bollywood films in their own right. But it's important to remember that these films are being produced in collaboration with Indian writers, producers, and film studios. Rather than "failing to get a sense of the palate of the Bollywood consumer," they are more likely just attempting to broaden it. And they may yet have more success than Saawariya. Investors around the world seem to agree that Indian films may still turn out to be a cash cow, with preparations for "an unprecedented onslaught on Bollywood this year" in full swing.

Here's a story I missed earlier: 

Since February 2007, the value of India's stock market has doubled to 20000 points, and the biggest winners have been India's richest. Based on these gains, India's four wealthiest men are now worth more than China's 40 wealthiest combined. [...]

All told, India's 40 wealthiest businessmen are worth $351 billion, according to Forbes – easily the most in Asia. Its four richest – steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, [oil and supermarket magnate Mukesh] Ambani, his brother Anil Ambani, and [real estate baron Kushal Pal] Singh – hold more than half that sum.

No wonder Japanese mothers are scrambling to send their kids to Indian schools.

An Indian Charlie-class sub (via FAS)

Passport has already had a lot of coverage of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran (you can see my take here over at Danger Room), so I'd like to call attention to a development that has hitherto flown under the radar: India is readying its first domestically built nuclear submarine for sea trials in 2009.

The sub, reportedly a modified version of the Soviet/Russian Charlie-II, has been code-named the Advanced Technology Vessel. While the Soviet Charlie II sub did not have the capability to carry nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, the Indian version reportedly will. (Though one source implies it may use cruise missiles instead.) Either way, the program is further evidence of India's accelerating military expansion. It should be noted, though, that the 2009 test date is a slight slip from revelations a few months ago, which said the sub would be tested next year.

India's ostensible motive is to develop a secure "second-strike capability," i.e. the ability to withstand a nuclear attack and still be able to hit back with nukes. Both India and Pakistan currently rely on a combination of bombers and short- to mid-range missiles for their nuclear delivery platforms, though India is more dependent on aircraft and Pakistan on missiles. A seafaring deterrent capability for India will provide a more secure force, but it is unlikely to make Pakistan more vulnerable to nuclear attack—the country's lack of strategic depth already ensures its vulnerability. India will have an advantage in survivability, though. Submarines are the most secure type of nuclear delivery platform possible. China may also have reason to be concerned, given ongoing border disputes with India and the potential for further competition in the future.

The context in which the Indian navy chief, Admiral Sureesh Mehta, revealed the submarine also sheds light on the Indo-Russian defense relationship. India has only one aircraft carrier in its inventory — the INS Viraat — which is aging and operating well beyond its expected lifetime. India therefore ordered an aircraft carrier from Russia to be delivered in 2008, so as to prevent a gap in Indian naval capabilities. Unfortunately, the project is behind schedule and Russia has doubled the price tag already. As a result, Admiral Mehta called for an end to price negotiations with Russia on the carrier contract amid calls for the entire relationship to be reexamined. Given these difficulties, look for India to move for more indigenous capabilities — like its nuclear sub — as fast as possible in coming years.

NORBERT MILLAUER/AFP/Getty Images

Where's the most car-crazy place in the world?

An easy question, right? Of course it's United States, where the U.N. estimates there are 776 cars for every 1,000 people. But other countries are catching up. China has held the top spot for new-car sales for several years, and by 2012, India is projected to take over as the world's fastest-growing car market.

Indian officials are preparing for the jump. Along with the biggest highway-construction boom since independence, India will also be raising its speed limits from the current upper limit of 80km/h (48mph) to 100km/h (60mph), thereby lopping nearly 3 hours off the trip between New Delhi and Mumbai.

With all the highways and faster speed limits, India might have to come up with a better driver's licensing scheme. That is to say, the country might actually need to develop one. No driving test is required to obtain a license despite India's 96,000 traffic fatalities each year.

Cars seem to be a global right of passage for fast-developing countries, but with more cars and higher speed limits, critics are already complaining. With higher speeds generally comes lower fuel efficiency, increased carbon emissions, and higher global oil prices. Despite billions in new highway spending, increased public transportation is not in India's plans.

China and India both seem to look at the U.S. transportation system as a model worth replicating, but it's a system that was developed over 50 years ago at a time when oil was cheap and efficiency was not a concern. It's time to get a new model.

Update: It seems that this post has generated a bit of criticism from The Other Side, which takes exception to my characterization of the Indian driver's licensing system and the efficiency of motor vehicles. I'm not one to shy away from criticism so allow me to clarify two points:

1. Mr. Kumar is absolutely correct in that India does indeed have a driver's licensing system on the books. I was using a bit of blogger's "poetic license" to say that whatever system is in place is entirely unsatisfactory; a point made in the original Guardian article.
2. In regards to efficiency, one can debate endlessly about the engineering mechanics of combustion engines, the price of gasoline and the possibility that there could be great advances in alternative fuel technologies. But in the meantime, cars and trucks are still less efficient than transporting people and goods by other means, such as trains. The United States erred in investing heavily in highways starting in the 1950s when we could have instead promoted mass transit systems. India's trains, from what I can tell, are in need of some serious upgrades. Of course, there will always be a need and a use for highways but, in my opinion, India shouldn't attempt to copy our own outdated model.