Business Standard

A deal worth pursuing

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Business Standard New Delhi
If you build a bunch of nuclear power plants, using materials and technology taken from someone else, and if all that can be recalled if you indulge in any of several actions including nuclear testing, it goes without saying that the costs of nuclear testing go up quite dramatically. That makes a nuclear test less likely than if the costs were lower. This does not mean that India has signed away its right to test; it does mean that India is much less likely to exercise that right. India's negotiators, who have hammered out the draft of the "123 agreement" with the United States, have tried hard to minimise the risks and the costs""by negotiating the right to stockpile raw materials to run the nuclear power plants, as also the right to reprocess spent fuel, and by getting the US to agree that India can still use raw materials from other sources (which however may be only a theoretical right since the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers' Group, or NSG, usually acts together). What is also not clear is why India would want the raw material if the equipment itself has to be returned, unless the undeclared intention is to buy as much non-American equipment as possible.
 
Is this a good bargain? The answer depends on two things. First, how badly does India need nuclear power and how likely is it to set up a large number of nuclear power plants? Second, how much of a need does it have for additional testing? The real danger is that, after negotiating long and hard, the government fails to take the necessary steps to increase India's nuclear power generating capacity""which is almost certainly going to be the result if matters are left in the hands of the department of atomic energy, which has missed every target it has set for itself, and missed by a mile. Indeed, the atomic scientists who have been vocal in their criticism of the nuclear deal should realise that it is their failures under the autarkic nuclear model of the past three decades that have led to the need for fresh external dependence when it comes to nuclear technology and materials. It is easy to hide such failures by posing behind the national flag, but that does not take away the hard fact. So the question must be, who other than the department of atomic energy should be allowed to get into the business of nuclear energy""only public sector players like the National Thermal Power Corporation (which has a great track record), or private sector players too like Tata Power and Reliance Energy? These questions have not been debated so far, and will prove as contentious as the "123".
 
As for additional testing, it is clear that the government is sanguine about the prospect of not testing further, in the given circumstances""thereby continuing the moratorium that was announced nine years ago by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Indeed, the draft wording of the agreement says that the United States will look into the reasons for any fresh testing that India might undertake, implying that in some circumstances it might agree with India's security perceptions. Does this therefore amount to the "cap, freeze and rollback" of India's strategic nuclear capability, as the critics have said? It would seem not""otherwise, Pakistan would not be so concerned about what is about to be signed. Indeed, it is common sense that if India gets access to uranium from other countries for power generation, it can keep all its domestic uranium for weapons purposes""thereby actually enhancing India's nuclear capability. The BJP, which has come out in opposition to the deal, is being hypocritical because it was willing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in return for very much less than Manmohan Singh has now extracted.
 
To be sure, the deal is not everything that the Prime Minister first promised""India does not have the same status as the nuclear haves under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968. And there are clauses in the Hyde Act that will make many people uncomfortable. But it does get access to things that have so far been denied to it. So while compromises have been made, the question is whether they are compromises that the country can live with, and the answer would seem to be "yes", provided a satisfactory agreement can be hammered out now with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the green signal then obtained from both the US Congress and the 45-country Nuclear Suppliers' Group.

 

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First Published: Aug 06 2007 | 12:00 AM IST

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