Nuclear Technology
India is undoubtedly one of the nuclear superpowers of the world. Being the largest populated democracy in the world, it has proven itself as a force to be reckoned with, especially after the two nuclear weapon tests of 1998. Due to its precarious relationships with its neighbours, especially Pakistan, India has been actively undergoing research in nuclear weapons as a form of deterrence. However, nuclear technology can also be utilised for peacetime purposes as shown below.
The principal aim of India's nuclear energy programme is the development and utilisation of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes such as power generation, applications in agriculture, medicine, industry, research and other areas. India is today, globally acknowledged as one of the countries most advanced in nuclear technology. The country is self-reliant and excels in the expertise covering the complete nuclear cycle - from exploration and mining to power generation and waste management.
The basis of Indian nuclear policy is a world free of nuclear weapons, which would enhance not only India's security but the security of all nations. In the absence of universal disarmament, India could scarcely accept a regime that arbitrarily divided nuclear haves from have-nots. India has always insisted that all nations' security interests are equal and legitimate. From the start, therefore, its principles instilled a distaste for the self-identified and closed club of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. India's nuclear policy remains firmly committed to a basic tenet: that the country's national security in a world of nuclear proliferation lies either in global disarmament or in exercise of the principle of equal and legitimate security for all.
During the 1950s, nuclear weapons were routinely tested above ground, making the mushroom cloud the age's symbol. Even then, when the world had witnessed only a few dozen tests, India took the lead in calling for an end to all nuclear weapons testing, but the calls of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, went unheeded.
In the 1960s, India's security concerns deepened. In 1962, China attacked India on its Himalayan border. The nuclear age entered India's neighbuorhood when China became a nuclear power in October 64. From then on, no responsible Indian leader could rule out the option of following suit. With no international guarantees of Indian security forthcoming, nuclear abstinence by India alone seemed increasingly worrisome.
With the 1962 war with China very much on his mind, Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri began tentatively investigating a subterranean nuclear explosion project. A series of Indian nonproliferation initiatives had scant impact. In 1965, to make matters worse, the second war between India and Pakistan broke out. Shastri died in 1966 and was succeeded by Indira Gandhi, who continued the fruitless search for international guarantees. In 1968, India reaffirmed its commitment to disarmament but decided not to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
India’s nuclear programme began in 1969 with the support of the USA and Canada. Two American-made General Electric boiling water reactors began operating at Tarapur in 1969 and Atomic Energy Canada Ltd. supplied a pressurized heavy-water Candu (the trademarked name for “Canada Deuterium Uranium”) reactor that began operating at Rawatbhata in Rajasthan in 1972. However, co-operation ended in 1974 when India exploded a nuclear device, Pokharan I, demonstrating a potential weapons capability. India was left on her own and began building modified clones of the Canadian design.
With abundant uranium deposits and limited conventional energy resources, India saw nuclear plants as a cheap source of power. However, plant construction was in actual fact slower and more costly than expected. Equipment problems forced operators to run the reactors well below capacity, resulting in nuclear energy meeting only just 2% of India’s power needs. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has only inspected 4 nuclear plants, those built with assistance from the USA and Canada. Many of the nuclear plants go unchecked and unregulated by international teams.
Throughout the years, there have been numerous problems at the nuclear plants, nearly resulting in nuclear disasters. However, they have been largely unchecked due to governmental intervention and since no real disaster actually happened, things were left on their own. India’s refusal to sign the Non Proliferation Treaty and its decades long quest for nuclear weapons made it a pariah in the nuclear community. It has since ventured on the nuclear path in a lone crusade, deprived of western supply of spare parts, inspection equipment and latest technology. India's nuclear power industry suffers from an arrogant and callous management determined to maintain a posture of self-sufficiency even at the expense of safety.
After 1991
India’s Reasons for Nuclear Testing of 1998:
While the end of the Cold War transformed the political landscape of Europe, it did little to ameliorate India's security concerns. The rise of China and continued strains with Pakistan made the 1980s and1990s a greatly troubling period for India. At the global level, the nuclear weapons states showed no signs of moving decisively toward a world free of atomic danger. Instead, the nuclear nonproliferation treaty(NPT) was extended indefinitely and unconditionally in 1995, perpetuating the existence of nuclear weapons in the hands of five countries busily modernizing their nuclear arsenals.
In 1996, after they had conducted over 2,000 tests, a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) was opened for signature, following two and a half years of negotiations in which India participated actively. This treaty, alas, was neither comprehensive nor related to disarmament but rather devoted to ratifying the nuclear status quo. India's options had narrowed critically. India had to ensure that its nuclear option, developed and safeguarded over decades, was not eroded by self-imposed restraint. Such a loss would place the country at risk. Faced with a difficult decision, New Delhi realized that its lone touchstone remained national security. The nuclear tests it conducted on May 11 and 13 were by then not only inevitable but a continuation of policies from almost the earliest years of independence.
India's May 1998 tests violated no international treaty obligations. The CTBT, to which India does not subscribe, permits parties to withdraw if they believe their supreme national interests to be jeopardized. Moreover, the forcing of an unconditional and indefinite extension of the NPT on the international community made 1995 a watershed in the evolution of the South Asian situation. India was left with no option but to go in for overt nuclear weaponization. The Sino-Pakistani nuclear weapons collaboration-a flagrant violation of the NPT made it obvious that the NPT regime had collapsed in India's neighborhood. Since it is now argued that the NPT is unamendable, the legitimization of nuclear weapons implicit in the unconditional and indefinite extension of the NPT is also irreversible.
India could have lived with a nuclear option but without overt weaponization in a world where nuclear weapons had not been formally legitimized. That course was no longer viable in the post-1995 world of legitimized nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, the full implications of the 1995 NPT extension were debated neither in India nor abroad. This fatal setback to nuclear disarmament and the progress towards de-legitimization of nuclear weapons was thoughtlessly hailed by most peace movements abroad as a great victory. Nor was the CTBT helpful. In negotiations on the CTBT in 1996, India for the first time stated that the nuclear issue is a national security concern for India and advanced that as one reason why India was unable to accede to the CTBT. Presumably this persuaded the nuclear hegemons to introduce a clause at the last minute pressing India, along with 43 other nations, to sign the treaty to bring it into force.
This coercive clause violates the Vienna Convention on Treaties, which stipulates that a nation not willing to be a party to a treaty cannot have obligations arising out of that treaty imposed on it. Even more galling, this clause was introduced at the insistence of China-the provider of nuclear technology to Pakistan. When the international community approved the coercive CTBT, India's security environment deteriorated significantly.
India's plight worsened as the decade wore on. In 1997 more evidence surfaced on the proliferation between China and Pakistan and about U.S. permissiveness on this issue. During Chinese President Jiang Zemin's recent visit to Washington, the United States insisted on a separate agreement with China on Chinese proliferation to Iran and Pakistan, which the Chinese signed instead of professing their innocence. Both the U.S. unease and the Chinese signature attest to Chinese proliferation as a threat to India's
security. After all these assurances, China continued to pass missile technology and components to Pakistan. Despite this, the Clinton administration was still willing to certify that China was not proliferating or-even worse for India-that the United States was either unable or unwilling to restrain China. As the range of options for India narrowed, so, too, did the difficulties of taking corrective action.
Present
Today India is a nuclear weapons state. This adds to its sense of responsibility as a nation committed to the principles of the U.N. Charter and to promoting regional peace and stability. During the past 50 years, India made its nuclear decisions guided only by its national interest, always supported by a national consensus. Its Nuclear Technology has been harnessed in many different ways like in spin-off technologies, nuclear agriculture, water management, healthcare and high technology development.
However, there is also the argument that India’s decision to build the nuclear bomb was not a response to external security threats but a domestic Indian need to assert its national identity, break from its colonial legacy, and become the great power that it felt it should be rightfully be.
