India and the International Space Station

Here's the latest feature article in The Space Review, which is a fairly respected journal in the space community. It's calling for India to be invited as a partner in the International Space Station. Apparently, we're considered a better candidate than China.

On the one hand, the ISS has been considered somewhat of a white elephant, gobbling money that might have otherwise been better spent on other space programs. But Indian participation in such a project could help to cement high-level partnerships that could make us a fixture in the space community, and open up further new opportunities. This in turn will help us to bulk up the ranks of our budding engineering community, by offering more opportunities at home.

Where we might be conservative on budgetary expenditures, we could make up for it by being a facilitator and cost-reducer for others. For instance, we can reduce US dependence on Russia for ISS resupply launches (a situation which the Americans loathe).