Privy

Over the coming days, one can expect a lot of pondering on what we did right or what we did wrong in handling the nuclear deal with the United States of America. I hope India, at least with the NSG, did not make any commitments with regard to Nuclear Testing. Once NSG waiver is received, India has the options of approaching countries like France and Australia and make more favorable deals with them, compared to what we get with the USA.

Even so, I would be happy that this waiver went through, as I sincerely believe India cannot afford to take a lone walk on the road to developing Nuclear technology anymore. It was needed to be done some 15 years back, so that we would have been reaping all the benefits by now. I stay in Bangalore and in this so called hi-tech city, we get 5-6 power cuts of 1 hour each, daily! The government makes promises each day, only to break it the very next day. India seriously needs electricity.

Coming back to the point of Nuclear testing, only Taliban will choose Nuclear weapons over development. We, as a country, with a 30+ year history in nuclear technology have tested nuclear weapons only twice. After pokhran 2, we were faced with a number of sanctions, only to be revoked within no time (read pressure by some cola company). The truth is USA needs India (read Indian market) and more so in the future. Why is USA so hell-bent in getting through a nuclear deal with India? There is a business of atleast $20 billion for American companies like General Electric and this is a modest figure compared to $100 billion overall.

Now, under what circumstances would India want to test its nuclear arsenal. One possibility, it is able to make significant progress in Thorium enrichment. That is problem solved! Second possibility, Pakistan or China testing their nuclear weapons. I think this situation might cause only temporary panic among the NSG members and they will all come to a conclusion in terms of India’s favour. Now, even if there is a situation when India needs to test outside the above scenarios, than how long can the world afford to isolate India?

On the other hand, what is the guarentee that USA will continue the supply of fuel even if it agreed today to allow India to test? It is a super power and India cannot do much to make it supply the power. Some new president might not like India. Lot of our worries with regard to the deal are hypothetical (and so might be some of the benefits).

However, in a world as complicated as we live in today, all that I wrote above may not apply.