Will Russia and India Join Forces for HPC?

The Russian Academy of Sciences, along with the Russian computer company RSA Group, are reaching out to India in hopes of establishing a collaboration for building a supercomputer to compete with China's dazzling Tianhe-2 system. Tianhe-2 has held onto its lead position in the latest edition of the TOP500 supercomputer list. Russia and India both have supercomputer programs now, but they have lost some momentum over the past five years as China, Japan, the USA, and several European countries have forged ahead.
According to a report in the Economic Times of India, Russian Academy's Boris Shabanov has "...invited a team from the Indian Institute of Science and the Karnataka government to explore the possibility of a supercomputing center in Bangalore, India." According to the report, Indian and Russian scientists believe "the Chinese are way ahead" and are looking for a way to close the gap.
Most supercomputing experts are well aware that building a big computer cluster is only part of the solution--the system will only be useful if you have sufficient numbers of professional resources to operate and manage the cluster, and a large enough scientific community to create experiments and write programs to keep the system busy and productive. In addition to combining funding sources, a partnership between India and Russia could lead to greater scientific colloboration, which could benefit both scientific communities.