G. Mudur (The Telegraph) and R. Ramachandran (The Hindu) have reported today about American seismologist Prof. Roger Bilham's discovery that he now figures in a blacklist of "unwanted foreigners". His "crime" appears to be a paper -- written with an Indian collaborator, and published in Current Science, India's premier science journal -- on the seismic risk to the Jaitapur nuclear power plant. [See K.S. Jayaraman's summary of the scientific controversy triggered by that paper.]
There doesn't seem to be anything in these stories that the Indian government can claim as a net positive for itself.
India loses its moral high ground when Indian scientists face travel-related hassles in other countries [remember this from 2006?], and a relatively unknown scientific controversy about the safety of the government's flagship nuclear power plant has escaped from scientific journals into mass media.
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