India Tightens Grip On Sri Lanka As US And China Take The Back Seat – Analysis

Sri Lanka's Colombo Dockyard. Photo Credit: Colombo Dockyard PLC

 April 24, 2026

By P. K. Balachandran

With China virtually withdrawing from Sri Lanka and the United States embroiled in wars in West Asia and Europe, India has stepped into the breach in the island nation, making significant economic and political inroads in recent days.

India has entered the ports, shipping and energy sectors, while China has not gained ground.

The time now appears propitious for India to make bold moves. In the subcontinent, arch-rival Pakistan is busy mediating between the US and Iran over the Strait of Hormuz. China, too, is deeply engaged in securing energy flows through the Strait.

For a change, rivals India and China have been trying to build bridges with each other due to shared difficulties vis-à-vis the Trumpian United States.

China responded favourably to India’s moves to mend the fences with economic concessions to secure Chinese investments. The two countries have increased air services to facilitate a greater movement of goods and people.

SINOPEC Refinery in Doldrums

In 2024, elections in Sri Lanka brought to power the pro-Beijing National Peoples’ Power (NPP). And when President Anura Kumara Dissanayake visited Beijing in 2025, it was assumed that China was back in Sri Lanka as an influential economic and geopolitical factor after its virtual exit from the island during the economic crisis in 2020.

Indeed, China and Sri Lanka announced an agreement to set up a huge oil refinery in Hambantota with an investment of US$ 3.7 billion But the refinery to be set up by Sinopec, is yet to take off. It is facing multiple issues like disputes over the equity structure, tax concessions, market access, allocation of land for the project, and environmental concerns.

The deal also raised worries about sovereignty and long-term economic independence. Red flags were raised about China’s controlling a major deep-water port and a potential mega refinery in the same area (Hambantota).

The original Request for Proposal (RFP) had stipulated foreign equity to be capped at 20%, and mandated 80% of the projected output per day to be earmarked for exports. But Sinopec sought a larger equity share and dilution of the 80% export obligation to enable it to gain wider access to the domestic market in Sri Lanka.

Till now Sri Lanka has ruled out any changes in the RFP.

Separately, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) had raised concerns that unrestricted market access for Sinopec could severely disrupt the petroleum sector in Sri Lanka and adversely affect energy security.

The Sri Lankan government had initially offered 500 acres of land for the project in Arabokka, in the Hambantota district. Subsequently, Sinopec requested an additional 200 acres just 3.5 kilometres from the Chinese-controlled port at Hambantota. The authorities concerned are yet to decide on the quantum of land to be allocated, and there is also the related issue of lease duration for the land to be allocated. Hence, no formal agreement has been reached in this regard.

Meanwhile, the Central Environment Authority (CEA) had issued the terms of reference to Sinopec to carry out an environmental impact study and submit the report to it. 

Take over of Colombo Dockyard

With threats to its presence in Sri Lanka receding, India is pushing the envelope in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka has just allowed the government-owned ship building company, Colombo Dockyard PLC (CDPLC), to be acquired by the Mazagaon Docks Ltd. (MDL) run by India’s Defence Ministry. The Colombo Dockyard PLC, Sri Lanka’s largest shipyard, has become a subsidiary of MDL following the acquisition of a controlling 51% stake. The Board of CDPLC has been reconstituted with MDL nominees.

MDL’s total investment is valued at US$ 26.8 million. This is MDL’s first international acquisition and a transformative step aligned with the Modi government’s “Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047.”

The acquisition of CDPLC is seen in both Sri Lanka and India as expanding India’s strategic footprint in the Indian Ocean. By controlling Sri Lanka’s largest shipyard—located within the Port of Colombo—India gains a critical hub for ship repair and maintenance along major global shipping routes.

India’s Adani Ports is already operating the West Container Terminal in Colombo port to share the business with the Chinese-run Colombo International Container Terminals (CTCT), South Asia’s most efficient terminal.

Trincomalee Oil Tanks

India is also seeking to accelerate the Trincomalee energy hub project in Eastern Sri Lanka, which includes an oil pipeline running from Trincomalee to Tamil Nadu. India will be partnering with the UAE in this project.

“The project will transform Trincomalee into a major energy hub in South Asia. With India’s cooperation, it should be completed expeditiously,” said Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri while briefing the media on the two-day official visit to Sri Lanka of Indian Vice President C.P. Radhakrishnan. Misri added that the Vice President’s visit provided an opportunity to highlight the strategic importance of the Trincomalee project to the Sri Lankan authorities.

Under the first phase of this project, an oil pipeline is to be laid between Tamil Nadu in South India and Trincomalee, which has 99 giant oil tanks under Indian control. The tanks had been built in 1944 by the British, who were fighting the Japanese.

However, many in Sri Lanka think that the 1987 Indo-Sri Lanka agreement, which stipulates that the Trincomalee oil tanks restoration work would be undertaken as a joint venture between India and Sri Lanka, has no legal basis.

In 2003, bilateral negotiations saw all 99 tanks in the facility leased for 35 years at an annual rent of US$ 100,000. However, the lease agreement was never fully implemented, partly owing to the civil war in Sri Lanka and partly owing to opposition in Sri Lanka.

In 2017, both sides agreed in principle to jointly operate the tank farm, but the deal saw little progress. Sri Lankan oil worker unions continue to staunchly oppose Indian involvement in the project. The issue has also become entangled in Sri Lankan politics and used to stir anti-India sentiments, which, as history has shown, can transform into votes during elections.

Earlier, local opposition, environmental objections and a dispute over financial terms forced the Adanis’ project to install a wind power plant in North Sri Lanka. That was to replace a Chinese project, which India had objected to.

Overseas Indian Citizenship Granted

Be that as it may, in a move of enormous geopolitical import, India has decided to fast-track the grant of Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) cards to Sri Lankan citizens of Indian origin up to the sixth generation. 

By this step, 1.5 million Tamils of Indian origin, who are mostly workers in the Sri Lankan plantations, can obtain OCI cards which enable them to travel to India any number of times, do business there and acquire properties. But they will not have the right to vote. It is reported that 500,000 Indian Origin Tamils have applied immediately.

Some say approvingly that the grant of OCI status to the Indian Origin Tamils will greatly expand India’s strategic footprint in Sri Lanka. However, commentators from the majority Sinhalese community argue that the unilateral Indian project should have been discussed in the Sri Lankan parliament first.

Columnists also wonder if the Anura Kumara Dissanayake government is putting all its eggs in one basket – the Indian basket, when India itself has stopped doing so?

Successive Sri Lankan governments have allowed India to acquire a political and economic foothold among the plantation Tamils of Indian origin. This is because Indian aid to them has relieved Sri Lankan governments of the responsibility to look after them – Sri Lanka’s poorest and the least educated. It is India which has built 4000 plus houses for them and sent teachers to their schools.

However, the strategic community in Sri Lanka has been warning Colombo about the possibility of Indian-origin Tamils getting alienated from the Sri Lankan State and their becoming a client of India in the latter’s geopolitical plans.

 

New quantum technique could dramatically boost the speed of secure communications

Novel method, developed by Bar-Ilan University researchers, taps the broad bandwidth of quantum light to process many channels at once

Bar-Ilan University

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A new Bar-Ilan University study points to a major advance in quantum information processing, demonstrating a way to send, manipulate, and measure quantum information across many frequency channels simultaneously, rather than one at a time. The study was recently published in the journal Science Advances.

The approach could allow quantum communication technologies, including secure key distribution and quantum teleportation, to operate far more efficiently by taking advantage of the enormous bandwidth already available in quantum light sources.

Today, one of the main limits in quantum information processing is not the light source itself, but the measurement technology. Quantum light sources can operate across an extremely broad optical spectrum, but standard detectors can measure only a tiny fraction of that bandwidth. As a result, much of the available capacity goes unused.

To overcome this bandwidth bottleneck, researchers from Bar-Ilan University harnessed a method they invented for ultrafast quantum detection (namely parametric homodyne detection) that allows to detect the quantum entanglement of light across many frequency channels simultaneously.

In this work, the same group takes this method a major step forward, demonstrating parallel quantum processing of information. Using broadband squeezed light, spectral shaping, and parametric homodyne detection, they were able to generate, manipulate, and measure several quantum channels simultaneously.

As a proof of principle, the team experimentally demonstrated continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) over 23 independent spectral channels, with the ability to detect eavesdropping in each one. They also demonstrated multiplexed quantum teleportation.

The results suggest that quantum systems do not have to operate one channel at a time. Instead, many channels can be used simultaneously across the optical spectrum, potentially increasing the throughput of quantum protocols by orders of magnitude.

“We’re sitting on an enormous quantum bandwidth, and until now we’ve barely used it,” said Prof. Avi Pe’er, of the Department of Physics and Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials at Bar-Ilan University, who led the study. “This work shows how to open that bottleneck and run many quantum channels in parallel — a step that could dramatically boost the speed of secure communication and other quantum technologies.”

The researchers say the method could eventually enable massively parallel quantum processing, with realistic systems potentially supporting thousands of channels.

“This is how we begin to scale quantum communication to real-world levels,” Pe’er added. “By using many channels at once, we can dramatically increase what these systems are capable of.”

The study highlights a path toward faster and more scalable quantum networks by making fuller use of the bandwidth already available in light.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.adw5085 

Article Title

Multiplexed processing of quantum information across an ultrawide optical bandwidth

 

Scientists at Stevens Institute of Technology reveal that time can go quantum in ion clock experiments

Physicists show that atomic clocks can probe time ticking both faster and slower simultaneously, revealing how time itself unfolds in quantum superposition.

Stevens Institute of Technology

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Trapped ions are versatile platforms used for quantum computing and ultra-precise timekeeping. New results now show that combining these capabilities can reveal a deeper layer of physical reality: quantum superpositions of the passage of time. 

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Credit: Igor Pikovski

HOBOKEN, NJ., April 20, 2026 — Few concepts in physics are as familiar, yet as enigmatic, as time. In Einstein’s theory of relativity, time is not absolute: its passage depends on motion and gravity. But when combined with quantum physics, this relativistic form of time becomes even more counterintuitive. According to quantum theory, the flow of time itself may exist in a genuine quantum superposition, ticking faster and slower at the same time. Now, a new paper titled Quantum signatures of proper time in optical ion clocks, published on April 20, 2026 in Physical Review Letters, the premier physics research journal, shows that this striking possibility may soon be tested in the laboratory.

In this work, a team led by Assistant Professor of theoretical physics Igor Pikovski at Stevens Institute of Technology, in collaboration with experimental groups of Christian Sanner at Colorado State University and Dietrich Leibfried at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), explores quantum aspects of the flow of time and how they can be accessed with atomic clocks. Their results suggest that the same quantum technologies being developed for next-generation clocks and quantum computers may soon probe something far more fundamental: When a clock’s motion obeys quantum mechanics, its movement can exist in superposition, and with it the recorded passage of time itself. This is analogous to Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment, where the counterintuitive nature of quantum superposition is illustrated by a cat being both alive and dead; here it is the passage of time itself that is in superposition, like a cat that is both young and old at once.

“Time plays very different roles in quantum theory and in relativity,” says Pikovski. “What we show is that bringing these two concepts together can reveal hidden quantum signatures of time-flow that can no longer be described by classical physics.” 

In relativity theory, every clock experiences its own flow of time, which in turn depends on velocity and position. For example, a clock moving at 10 m/s for 57 million years would lag behind another clock at rest by just one second. This has been observed and confirmed with ultraprecise clocks, such as aluminum-ion clocks at NIST. 

The effect is often illustrated as the “twin paradox”: two identical twins will age differently, if one of them takes a high-speed roundtrip. Yet there is a more counterintuitive version: the “quantum twin paradox.” Can a single clock experience two different times in a quantum superposition, and become both younger and older simultaneously? According to quantum theory, as outlined by Pikovski and collaborators over a decade ago, that should happen. So far, such subtle effects have been beyond experimental reach, however, the team’s new theoretical study shows that atomic clocks are now up to the task.

The authors of the now published paper investigated the interplay of relativistic time and quantum effects in atomic clocks, such as those developed at NIST and at Colorado State University where scientists trap single ions (such as aluminum or ytterbium), cooling them to near absolute zero temperature and manipulate their quantum states with laser pulses. The results of their study show that by combining the rapidly improving clock technology with quantum information techniques developed for trapped-ion quantum computing, unique and yet undetected quantum features of time can be observed. 

“Atomic clocks are now so sensitive, they can detect tiny differences in time caused by just the thermal vibrations at miniscule temperatures,” says Gabriel Sorci, a PhD candidate at Stevens Institute of Technology and co-author of the paper. “But even at the absolute zero temperature, the ground state, the ticking rate will still be affected by just the quantum fluctuations alone.” 

The team went one step further. Rather than just cooling the atoms, they show that one can instead manipulate the vacuum itself, creating so-called squeezed states in which the position and velocity of the clock exhibit subtle quantum behavior. The result is a new manifestation of relativistic time in the quantum regime, where superpositions and entanglement of time arise: a single clock can measure how it ticks both faster and slower simultaneously, and entangle with the squeezed motion. The team now aims to demonstrate the effects in the laboratory.    

“We have the technology to generate the required squeezing and a path to reach the clock precision needed in ion clocks to observe such effects for the first time,” says Sanner of Colorado State. 

Looking ahead, Pikovski, whose recent work includes showing that single gravitons can be detected using quantum technology, points to the bigger picture. “Physics is still full of mysteries at the most fundamental level. Quantum technologies are now giving us new tools to shed light on them.”

 

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Stevens is a premier, private research university situated in Hoboken, New Jersey. Since our founding in 1870, technological innovation has been the hallmark of Stevens’ education and research. Within the university’s three schools and one college, more than 8,000 undergraduate and graduate students collaborate closely with faculty in an interdisciplinary, student-centric, entrepreneurial environment. Academic and research programs spanning business, computing, engineering, the arts and other disciplines actively advance the frontiers of science and leverage technology to confront our most pressing global challenges. The university continues to be consistently ranked among the nation’s leaders in career services, post-graduation salaries of alumni and return on tuition investment.

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Journal

Physical Review Letters

Article Title

Quantum signatures of proper time in optical ion clocks

Article Publication Date

20-Apr-2026

Water simulation of famous quantum effect reveals unexpected wave patterns

A new study reveals how a spinning vortex causes system-wide, counter-rotating wave patterns, mimicking effects that occur, but cannot be seen, in the quantum realm.

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University

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Lines of momentarily flat water extend outward and rotate, in the opposite direction to the flow of the vortex. The left video shows the pattern from the experiment, while the right video shows the same effect in a simulation model.

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Credit: Singh et. al., (2026) Commun Phys.

In the quirky, quantum world, particles can be affected by forces that they never directly encounter. A classic example is the Aharonov–Bohm (AB) effect, where electrons are affected by a magnetic field, despite not passing through it. Although predicted in 1959, it took more than two decades to confirm this effect experimentally, as the specific changes to the electrons’ wave properties could only be inferred indirectly, and with great difficulty.

Now, physicists from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), in collaboration with the University of Oslo and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, have used a classical fluid analogue that mimics and extends the AB effect using a simple platform: a water tank. Published today in Communications Physics, the researchers have revealed that when water waves are sent towards a swirling vortex from opposite directions, it causes a striking pattern, with one or more lines of momentarily still water radiating outward and rotating in an almost hypnotic way.

“This was something new and unexpected,” says Aditya Singh, a PhD student in the Nonlinear and Non-equilibrium Physics Unit and co-first author of the study. “That’s what makes this fluid analogue system so valuable. It reveals topological effects — wave behaviors that occur across the whole system — that can’t be seen in quantum experiments.”

The beginnings with Berry

The team’s inspiration for this research traces back to a 1980 study by theoretical physicist Michael Berry, who first showed that the AB effect could be simulated in a classical fluid system. In the quantum version, electrons pass around a tightly coiled wire, called a solenoid. When an electric current flows through the solenoid, this generates a magnetic field that’s confined within the coil. However, electrons passing outside the solenoid, where the magnetic field is zero, are still affected, with their wave shifting in phase.

In Berry’s experiment, a vortex forming at the drain of a tank stood in for the solenoid. Instead of electrons, Berry caused water waves to travel across his tank, passing around the vortex rather than through it. The travelling waves developed a distinctive distortion — a pitchfork-like pattern centered on the vortex — marking a shift in their phase.

“With waves travelling the opposite direction, you see a mirror image pattern,” adds Jonas Rønning, co-first author and former postdoc in the OIST unit. “The question for us was: what happens if you send waves from both directions at the same time? We thought that the patterns might cancel each other out, or both pitchfork-like patterns would be visible, but our intuition was completely wrong.”

From travelling to standing waves 

In their experiment, the researchers created a vortex at the center of a large, custom-built water tank and generated waves from opposite sides of the tank so that they met and interfered. By illuminating the water’s surface from beneath and recording with a high-speed camera, the team could track how the wave pattern across the whole tank changed over time. 

Under conditions without a vortex, when opposing waves meet and interfere, this results in a predictable standing wave pattern where waves appear to be fixed in place. These patterns contain stationary lines, known as wavefronts, where the waves have the same phase.

But adding a vortex gives an unexpected twist. As the vortex causes shifts in the wave phase, this changes how the standing waves interfere with each other, resulting in rotating lines where the wave height is zero, called nodal lines.

“When we first saw these lines, we thought they were an experimental artefact,” says Singh. “But when we also saw them in our simulations, we dropped everything and quickly worked out the mathematics underlying how they arise.”

These nodal lines exhibit interesting behaviors, always rotating in the opposite direction to the vortex, and increasing in number as the researchers increased the vortex’s flow. 

At such an early stage of discovery, it’s unclear whether these nodal lines could have useful applications. But for the unit head and senior author, Professor Mahesh Bandi, the real draw is the limitless avenues now open for future research using their classical analogue system. “One direction is to make the system more complex by introducing multiple vortices and arranging them into a lattice,” says Bandi. “That setup would mirror conditions in some superconducting materials, with the water waves behaving like a supercurrent. We don’t yet know what we’ll see — and that’s exactly what makes it worth doing.”

More broadly, the team’s findings highlight the power of simple classical analogues to reveal new understanding about the quantum world. “Theorists might predict these effects, but quantum experiments wouldn’t see them,” he says. “With analogues like this, we can.”

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Journal

Communications Physics

DOI

10.1038/s42005-026-02603-w 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Topology made visible through standing waves in a spinning fluid

Article Publication Date

20-Apr-2026

Recreation of Berry’s travelling waves [VIDEO] 

As waves travel past the vortex, they distort and form pitchfork-like patterns, that are localized around the central vortex. When the direction of the waves is changed (arrow direction), the distortion pattern is mirrored. The top two sections show simulated patterns while the bottom two sections show the patterns seen in the experiments.

Credit

Singh et. al., (2026) Commun. Phys.

 

While identical in magnitude and frequency, the blue and red waves hit their peaks and troughs at different moments in time, and therefore have different phases. 

Credit

Waurids Baskurtf, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.5

The research team custom-built a water tank with a high-speed camera above to detect wave patterns on the water’s surface. 

Credit

Andrew Scott / OIST

OIST PhD student Aditya Singh generates and observes surface waves that act as a classical analogue to quantum effects.

Credit

Andrew Scott / OIST

Number of nodal lines is linked to vortex flow [VIDEO] 

In both simulations (above) and experiments (below), the number of rotating nodal lines increases with a faster vortex flow.  At lower flow (left), only one nodal line is seen, whilst at a higher flow (right), two nodal lines appear. 

Credit

Singh et. al., (2026) Commun. Phys.