"Indian scientists expelled to cripple the country’s chip technology"

Semiconductors and advanced materials, including ceramics which go into chip manufacture, are critical to instrumentation and control mechanisms for missiles, avionics, atomic power, super-computers and virtually anything to do with electronics.

Even vocal proponents of `swadeshi’ ideology such as Union Minister for Science and Technology Murli Manohar Joshi have often said that while India did not want US technology for making potato chips it could do with technology for semiconductor chips.

Significantly, even the latest `Param 10,000′ super-computer produced by the Centre for Advanced Computing (C-DAC) at Pune uses imported `Ultrasparc-II’chips manufactured by the Sun company, alongside C-DAC’s own communication processor.Military versions of the `Param 10,000′ computer are capable of simulating nuclear explosions and can be used for sub-critical testing using data collected from the Pokhran series.

According to former secretary in Department of Electronics, N Vittal, no advanced industrial society can exist without controlled access to an advanced electronics industry and India is a long way away from building up one on its own.

Vittal also points out that for India to build up and sustain an advanced electronics industry it must have access to an advanced microelectronics or chips industry somewhere.

The world chip industry is currently dominated by mega companies in the United States, Japan, Korea and Europe with Intel, the clear world leader.India has only a small share of the chip industry as it lacks the enormous capital spending, going into tens of billions of dollars.