In a nuclear fix
Praful Bidwai
Khaleej Times, 11 February 2006
Just two days after India voted against Iran at an International Atomic Energy Agency, as United States ambassador David Mulford urged her to do, the country’s Atomic Energy Commission chairman Anil Kakodkar detonated a bombshell. Last Monday, he accused Washington of shifting the goalpost on the "nuclear cooperation" deal. This may have created an impasse in talks under way on finalising the agreement.
Kakodkar confirmed that Indo-US differences mainly pertain to the separation of military nuclear facilities from civilian ones, so the latter can be placed under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. The sharpest divergence is over including India’s fast-breeder reactor programme in the civilian facilities list.
The US wants FBRs in that list because they generate more fissile material than they consume and can potentially produce weapons-grade plutonium. India wants to keep them out of the inspections regime. India earlier claimed that FBRs are essential for energy security. Now, Kakodkar says FBRs are essential for India’s nuclear weapons. He has tied FBRs to security.
To that calculus, he has added sovereignty: the determination of which facilities are civilian and which are military "has to be made by the Indians…" India’s strategic interests must be decided by Indians alone. His statement, made without prior authorisation from the Prime Minister’s Office, has raised the stakes in the New Delhi-Washington talks. This will probably complicate matters and impel Washington’s policy-makers to harden their positions.
In fact, Kakodkar seems to have chosen this sensitive stage in the negotiation process to hit back at his detractors who have orchestrated a media campaign to mount pressure on New Delhi to quickly finalise the July deal on Washington’s terms — by ignoring the ‘isolationist, outdated, reactionary’ nuclear scientists. Kakodkar’s interview was calculated to pressure Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to exclude FBRs from the civilian list, along with all facilities at Mumbai’s Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, the uranium enrichment plant near Mysore, and at least two power reactors.
Kakodkar’s interview, and his detractors’ hostile reaction to it, suggest a serious division in the Indian establishment over the nuclear deal. On one side are the ultra-nationalists who see the agreement as an American attempt to cap India’s nuclear capabilities. On the other are the ‘pro-US pragmatists’, themselves nuclear hawks. A third current is the growing peace movement, which opposes the deal because it legitimises nuclear weapons, consolidates a US-India alliance, promotes the wrong energy path, and encourages proliferation.
What explains the Establishment split and Kakodkar’s extreme step of going public? How will that change the outcome of the Indo-US talks? Will India gain or lose if the agreement falls through?
The Establishment split corresponds to differences between nuclear and defence scientists-engineers, and pro-nuclearists with an unabashedly pro-Washington agenda. The ultra-nationalist group reflects the culture of the Department of Atomic Energy, which has always been pampered despite its poor performance. The DAE has soaked up thousands of crores to deliver a pitiful 2.5 per cent of India’s electricity-with a host of safety problems. It claims its programme is largely indigenous. But it has borrowed/bought technology from the UK, US, Canada, USSR, Russia, France, China, even Norway. It loathes international safeguards. In general, the DAE resists accountability. It was dragged, kicking and screaming, into endorsing the nuclear deal. It’s now wreaking its revenge.
The pro-US pragmatists believe that India should sign on the dotted line to get its nuclear weapons legitimised and strengthen the US-India alliance even if that means compromising on India’s foreign policy options. That’s the shortcut to Great Power status.
This group has suddenly discovered the virtues of nuclear electricity. It always knew that the deal won’t be strictly equal. India would have to satisfy the US that the civilian-military separation is ‘credible and defensible’. No wonder this lobby also campaigned for India’s unfortunate votes against Iran.
The DAE wrongly presents FBRs as the gateway to energy security. FBRs are not a proved technology. They have been a failure everywhere, including in France, the world’s fast-breeder leader. However, the DAE has a trump card in the text of the deal, which says the civilian-military separation would be ‘voluntary and phased,’ although, in reality, it won’t be voluntary. Kakodkar has capitalised on this and tried to checkmate the PMO! He knows the PM cannot sack him without attracting the charge of acting under US pressure.
It’s extremely unlikely that the US will accept exclusion of FBRs from the civilian list. FBRs are an open-ended plutonium source for both civilian and military purposes. India has raised the stakes on FBRs. But so can the US. A beleaguered President Bush, whose acceptance ratings have plummeted to their lowest-ever level, is unlikely to push the deal through if FBRs are excluded. The deal seems unlikely to go through before Bush’s visit. If it’s not finalised soon, the momentum could be lost.
That won’t be bad for India. It’s in no one’s interest to legitimise and ‘normalise’ India’s (or the US’s) nuclear weapons. The route to real security lies in their elimination worldwide. If a special exception is made for India in the global nuclear order, that will promote proliferation, not least in Iran, Pakistan, Israel, North Korea, possibly Saudi Arabia. A world crawling with more nuclear powers will be more insecure.
Nuclear power is not the answer to India’s energy problems. Globally, its contribution to energy generation is shrinking. It’s expensive, and fraught with grave environmental and health hazards, including the problem of hazardous wastes that will remain radioactive for thousands of years. High oil prices don’t warrant more nuclear power, but higher investment in renewable energy and conservation.
The nuclear deal will trap India in a bind, narrowing her policy freedom. The vote on Iran, and growing intimacy between India and Israel, eloquently speak of the peril of getting too close to the US — the more so when Washington is set to play a reckless and retrograde world role. India should maintain a principled distance from the US. Kakodkar, despite his misguided logic, may have made a contribution to that.
Copyright 2006
|
