India, Slowly Becoming a South-East Asian Superpower

The Hindustani nation of India slowly flexing it`s muscles in South-East asia

The nation of India is making headlines on the international front that slowly is making the hindustani nation become a superpower in the south-east asian region. This week, ahead of scheduled meetings between the heads of state, India and Russia signed deals on nuclear energy and arms sales.

Russia is already building two nuclear power units in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu and agreed to install four more nuclear reactors there as part of an agreement signed during Medvedev's visit to India last year. The Russia's state-owned nuclear power firm - Rosatom could build up to 20 nuclear power units in India in all, including four to six in the state of West Bengal, the ITAR-TASS state news agency reported, citing the company's chief.

"These are not just billions, these are tens of billions of dollars" worth of contracts, Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko said, quoted by ITAR-TASS. On the arms side, India is looking for better air-defense capabilities, bolstering it`s navy as well as their airforce. It has been known for some time, India has been looking into AWACS for their airforce and other electronic warfare equipment as well as upgrading their soviet-era air fleet. India also soon will have an additional member to it`s navy fleet, the retired soviet-era 44,570-ton aircraft carrier Admiral Gorshkov.

All this comes on the heels of a joint venture between India and Russia to develop multirole transport aircraft (MTA). The plan calls for the production of 21o MTA`s jointly, with Russia buying 100 and India buying the rest. The MTA is intended to replace the Indian Air Force's transport aircraft, most of which were bought from Russia. India has about 100 medium-lift An-32s and about 20 heavy-lift Il-76s. In 2008, India signed a contract for the purchase of six C-130 Hercules transport planes from the U.S.

With all this said, India slowly is becoming a major superpower in the region but nothing close to China`s level yet but, India does have a faster rate of growth. If you look at Indian state ideals for the past 50-60 years, they have overcome so much to be where they are all in spite of their bitter neighboring rival Pakistan over nuclear capabilities. Now, it seems India wants to have an upper hand in the region to counter any possible Pakistani aggression should the government be dissolved and left to the radical mullahs or any other potential action to destabilize the region.