Also the late writer R.K. Narayan was a nobel nominee several times but never awarded. The reason cited (and this is not something I agree with necessarily but stating) - was that the social impact of Narayan's work could not be gauged easily.
Yes with regards to the materialistic rest-of-the-world we are a modest lot undoubtedly although that is changing rapidly now. Most of NASA scientists are Indians btw, Sanjay Gupta was chosen for Surgeon General's office, the highest office for medicine in US, and if you just look at CNN news you can see the number of indian experts on various fields starting from economics to philosophy and medicine.
We have had some discussions before on Oscars also, which is a somewhat controversial area similar to Nobel. One of the problems i have seen, even with very intelligent indians - and this go back all the way to the great Ramanujam - the difficulty integrating religious/cultural factors to the marketing of one's intelligence and abilities. With a fast changing world now we are facing a challenge of having any religious or spiritual grounding at all - in other words now it is all about marketing, but let us hope there will be a time when things come to a balance and we have our rightful place in the world.