The backdrop to the Indo-US Nuclear treaty was the fact that after India’s nuclear tests of 1974 and 1998, the outside world had imposed an embargo on trade with India in nuclear materials, equipment and technology. As a result of this, India’s nuclear energy programme suffered immensely.
As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in Parliament, while defending the nuclear treaty, though the Atomic Energy Commission had set a target of 10,000 Mw of nuclear electricity generation by the end of the 20th century, our capacity in 2008 was as low as 4,000 Mw — primarily due to the shortage of uranium in these plants. He said the agreement would end India’s nuclear isolation and enable it to take advantage of international trade in nuclear materials, technologies and equipment. It will open up new opportunities for trade in “dual-use” high technologies, he said. Dr Singh said the cooperation that the international community was now willing to extend for trade in nuclear materials, technologies and equipment for civilian use would be available to India without signing the NPT or the CTBT.
However, it seems that nothing has changed with the signing of the agreement and India is still living under the technology “denial” regime. The “dual use” items mentioned in the Entities-List still continue to be denied to Indian establishments like Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR) and several others. These establishments are even prepared to give an “end-use certificate” to the effect that the technological items imported would only be used for “civil nuclear purposes”. US exporters of these “dual use” items, classified as “EAR 99” by the US government, require an export licence even after the signing of the nuclear treaty. These items are not being made available on the submission of the “end-use certificate”, which should be accepted till the separation plan for civilian and defence nuclear plants is put in place.
India needs to take up the matter at the highest forum.
The US government should also be liberal with regard to EAR-99 items (dual-use items) to these organisations in the Entities-List.
Jagdish Mehra, Agra