Jitish Kallat . Eruda. Black lead on fibreglass.
60" x 60" x 168". 2006.

RED HOT IN THE AUCTION ROOMS AND HYPED BY THE PRESS, INDIAN Contemporary art seems to be on the cusp of breaking through to a new level of international visibility and critical acclaim. High-profile British collectors Charles Saatchi and Frank Cohen are in full swing, buying the most eye-catching works for their exhibitions, while internationally, more museums than ever before announce survey shows. In the meantime, prices of artworks scale new heights.

Particularly within India, where a critical discourse has existed for some time, many eyes are now on Western collectors and institutions in the belief that their validation represents an important step for Contemporary artists - many of whom have not hidden their ambition to transcend the constraints of national identity to play out their careers in the upper echelons of the international art world.

Beyond the high prices and media hyperbole, however, the Contemporary art world is a notoriously fickle place with many vested interests at play. This makes it hard to predict how things will be perceived once the investors and gamblers have cashed in their chips and time has allowed for a more balanced and informed appraisal of Contemporary Indian art.

Inevitably, the example of China looms large. From the very outset, its Contemporary art scene has been a magnet for Western curators and collectors in a way that seems unlikely ever to be replicated in India. Although the cultural and historical differences between these two Asian giants make comparisons somewhat specious, it is still often predicted that collectors will turn towards India as Chinese art rockets into the realm of multi-million dollar prices. This may not be the most accurate explanation of the boom in the Contemporary Indian art market. Nevertheless, the idea of art-collecting tourism, marked by the urge to keep hunting for 'the next new thing', is certainly a condition of today's globalised art world. Indian art appears to be the latest attraction for those cultural jet-setters who prefer to stick close to the reassuring Miami-Basel nexus.

It is an interesting paradox that in the quest for parity with the art of the West, for the average Indian, the greatest validation of Contemporary Indian art is got not from the collector who has made a journey into Indian culture and has an informed and sensitive understanding of the work and its context. Instead, the judgment of another sort of collector holds sway. This collector might have little interest in Indian culture and, perhaps, little inclination to visit the subcontinent, but has the advantage of having access to Indian art through a dispassionate exploration of the borderless (although ultimately Occidental) world of Contemporary art.

Despite his Iraqi heritage, Charles Saatchi epitomises the latter approach. He has created a unique niche for himself as an arbiter of taste and manipulator of the market in whatever he chooses to collect. People still speak of 'the Saatchi factor' with reference to his almost magical ability to establish the careers of artists, a reputation based largely on his patronage of the likes of Damien Hirst, the Chapman Brothers and Tracey Emin in the 1990s.

Unlike his famed shopping forays into London's less salubrious gallery districts, Saatchi has not yet visited India on a collecting mission. In fact, before he began collecting Indian art last summer, there was a rumour that he was unimpressed with what he had seen. With his new museum set to open, however, it seemed out of character to pass up on what was so widely tipped to be the next big thing.

After opening with an exhibition on Chinese art, Saatchi will showcase his Indian collection in an exhibition, titled, The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, in early 2009. Hopes are high that the show will mark a watershed moment in the international reception of Indian Contemporary art.

This seems very possible, particularly since the show looks likely to coincide with survey exhibitions of Indian art at London's Serpentine Gallery and the Mori Art Museum in Japan as well as with the ARCO Contemporary Art Fair in Madrid next February, which has a special focus on India.

In fact, Saatchi is already posting images of his latest acquisitions on the hugely popular Saatchi Gallery website, a typically market-savvy gambit. Since he is known to have a taste for eye-catching works and large-scale installations, it is not surprising to find Jitish Kallat, Subodh Gupta and Bharti Kher well-represented. Kallat's Public Notice 2 (2007), in which Mahatma Gandhi's last speech is spelled out in 4,500 bone-shaped letters, and Eruda (2006), his 14 feet tall black lead sculpture of a bookseller, a common sight at traffic-lights in Bombay, are the sort of large-scale works that Saatchi's past exhibitions have revelled in. The same is true of Bharti Kher's An Absence Of Assignable Cause (2007), a giant bindi-covered heart.

Many of the works in Saatchi's collection have been acquired on the advice of London-based consultant Arianne Levene and gallerist Amelie von Wedel, who also advised Saatchi on his Chinese collection. "It's getting increasingly hard to find high-quality works, particularly since all the collectors want the same group of five or six artists," said Levene. "The better galleries will try to ensure that works go into reputed and ideally, visible international collections, but with prices going so crazy, it's a hard thing to control."

Levene has also helped to source Indian works for Manchester hardware mogul Frank Cohen, who has assembled one of the largest private collections of Contemporary art in the UK. A selection from his Indian collection was recently on display at Initial Access, his warehouse space outside Wolverhampton. It is unfortunate that the exhibition took place at such a remote venue because the exhibition, Passage to India, revealed a larger and more wide-ranging collection than Saatchi has, as yet, managed to acquire. It was filled with large-scale iconic works such as Bharti Kher's bindi-covered elephant, The Skin Speaks a Language Not Its Own (2006), large Ravinder Reddy heads, Sudarshan Shetty's Untitled simulated skeletons of cattle (2006), and Thukral and Tagra's artwork with battling dinosaurs.