NUCLEAR ISSUES

Where do we go from here?

If India is to regain its standing in the international arena as a country working towards a nuclear weapons-free world, it is imperative that it reach a national consensus on its future course of action.

A. GOPALAKRISHNAN

THE Bharatiya Janata Party-led government is on its way out after causing what I consider great damage to India's prestige and its bargaining power in international negotiations aimed at establishing a nuclear weapons-free world. To appreciate this, it is necessary to examine briefly the path we have been following since Pokhran-1 in 1974 and our recent fall from the high moral ground we were on during the closing days of the negotiations to finalise the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996. At that time India may have been called obstructionist by a few people, but we were still held in high esteem by many voiceless nations, which held and continue to hold universal disarmament as a cherished goal. We also need to keep in view the present realities, which include the serious doubts expressed about the extent of true technological gains made from the Pokhran-II and Agni-II tests. It is clear that we have to go a long way before achieving a semblance of minimum nuclear deterrence. The economic implications of this for the coming decades are also staggering. However, notwithstanding the damage done, it is imperative that we reach a national consensus on what to do next.

In 1964, China became a nuclear weapons power. Even if India wanted to go nuclear then, we could not have done so because of the lack of sufficient nuclear materials and technology. It would appear that the unique parochial advantages that the nuclear establishment could gain by making an atomic bomb were first realised by the hawkish elements in the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) long before politicians and defence organisations realised what was in it for them. It was the DAE which got the nuclear weapons programme initiated in the first place. The arrogance of power in Delhi after the liberation of Bangladesh, the flexing of muscles by the United States, which sent its Sixth Fleet to Asian waters in 1971 to intimidate India, and the increasing political opposition Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had to face in the early 1970s saw Indira Gandhi viewing the bomb as a tool to salvage her reputation and provide stability to her government. The scientists at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) were only too eager to help her out with the Pokhran-I explosion in 1974. The euphoria that followed was, however, short-lived. Politics and power struggles went back to what they usually are in India. The DAE's image was bolstered for a couple of years, but the technology ban imposed by the rest of the world stifled its performance and it fell increasingly into disrepute. In spite of this, successive governments allowed the DAE to continue on with research and development work related to nuclear weapons, which fell short of actual testing. From the mid-1980s, the DAE was ready with the full set of materials and at least crude technologies to conduct a second nuclear explosion at Pokhran. It began to press successive governments for clearance, driven primarily by the motive to boost its poor national image as a non-performing scientific department. One more series of explosions became a dire need for it to survive and to regain the hollow glory that it tasted in 1974. The option to conduct nuclear tests once again was very much available to governments that came to power from mid-1980s. However, in spite of the continuous knocking on their doors by the DAE, saner advice prevailed. There was a realisation that the country's real security did not lie in possessing a few crude nuclear weapons, but in being able to feed, clothe and shelter its large population and provide the people with basic amenities such as drinking water and basic health care. Those governments also gave some weightage to the fact that having attained Independence through a prolonged, non-violent struggle based on the principle of ahimsa, India should not stray into the race for developing and deploying weapons of mass destruction.

With a clearly expounded abhorrence to weapons of mass destruction and an abiding conviction in total nuclear disarmament and elimination of nuclear weapons everywhere, India had championed this cause among the international community in spite of the Pokhran-I test. The position of past Indian governments was always deliberately against India becoming a nuclear weapons power. This restraint was more difficult than just giving in to the pressures of top DAE scientists and other hawks in the country. At the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva and at the United Nations, India, in solidarity with the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), pushed a number of proposals aimed at achieving rapid de-escalation and a phased elimination of nuclear weapons. India could hold its head up in the comity of nations, especially among the developing and deprived nations of Asia and Africa which never had any independent say in world matters. Respect for India was evoked because the world could see that here was a country that was capable of nuclearising itself but had instead chosen to argue vehemently for de-nuclearisation. It was this approach that gradually increased India's bargaining strength and emboldened it to put forward the Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan (RGAP) of 1988.

The essential theme of the RGAP was that disarmament and elimination of weapons of mass destruction must go hand in hand. Thus, all treaties on arms control, arms limitation and non-proliferation would have to be properly linked and timed to serve a single objective - the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons on earth within a universally agreed time schedule. In this context, the CTBT, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT) were to be re-examined to ensure that they equitably met this overall objective. The underlying operational plan alluded to in the RGAP was a balanced, two-sided one: Let the nuclear powers agree, through a multi-lateral treaty obligation, that they will reduce their current nuclear stockpiles rapidly through a phased, stage-wise elimination on a schedule acceptable to all nations, and in return the non-nuclear powers, especially threshold powers such as India and Pakistan, would agree to commit themselves through a treaty obligation to accept all the applicable clauses in existing and envisaged instruments such as the NPT, the CTBT and the FMCT. (However, these instruments as they stand today may not be acceptable in toto in this context.) Successive governments since Rajiv Gandhi's time have, in principle, held on to the above Indian position. It is in this background that India refused to become a party to the deliberations on the indefinite extension of the NPT, discarded the CTBT as a discriminatory treaty, and stayed away from the deliberations on the FMCT.

Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee at the Pokhran test site in May 1998.

SO, what changed suddenly in 1998? What was the hurry for the BJP-led government to destroy all the groundwork and the position of strength past governments had painfully established over a long period of time? The nuclear establishment was once again the keenest player in this drama; it may have all along kept the top BJP politicians informed about the progress and readiness for conducting such tests even when the BJP was out of power. The DAE knew that the BJP was the only major political party that had for decades been clamouring to make India a nuclear weapons power, and that the relationship between this scientific department and a favourable political party had been built on mutual appreciation and need, each hoping that the other will help out when the time comes. Unfortunately for India, this occasion arose when the BJP-led coalition came to power in 1998. The rest is history, and a sad one at that. With one series of Shakti tests in May 1998, the DAE, the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and the BJP-led government have together wiped out the moral stand, the bargaining power and the esteem which successive governments had built over decades.

What did we gain in return? Very little, if any. It is now somewhat clear that the DAE and the DRDO selectively used the nuclear test data through preferential analysis routes to show an unrealistically large explosive power from the devices that were tested. This aside, it is impossible to believe scientifically that the five nuclear tests of May 1998 have indeed made us totally capable of designing, fabricating and deploying weapons to suit our "minimum deterrence" needs. Cleverly, the government or the scientists have never defined minimum deterrence; it is conveniently said that it can never be quantified. The same is the story with the Agni tests. After one test of the Agni-II, are we ready to deploy these missiles? The DAE, the DRDO and the BJP-led Government may have succeeded in fooling most of the people of India, but the rest of the world will certainly not accept these proclamations of strength. In order to become a nuclear weapons power capable of causing concern to China, we still have miles to go.

WHAT about the safety aspects of India's nuclear weapons during their fabrication, assembly and storage? In countries such as the U.S., under public statute (PL-100-456), a Defence Nuclear Facilities Safety Board has been created for independent external overseeing of all nuclear weapons activities affecting the health and safety of workers and the public. This Board reports to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. If the reviews by this Board disclose an imminent or severe threat to public health and safety, the Board is required by law to transmit its recommendations directly to the President and the Defence Secretary. In India, the DAE keeps a strangle-hold on even the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) which was set up to provide "independent" regulatory overseeing of the DAE's civilian programmes. Can the Government be expected to set up an independent and effective safety board for nuclear weapons activities? What risks are we taking then?

What are the options before a new government, and on what precisely can we reach a consensus? Broadly, it seems to me that we have to follow one of the two roads in front of us. One is to retain the present line of thinking: lie to ourselves that we have become a nuclear power, and deceive ourselves by believing that achieving a position of "minimum deterrence" is something within reasonable economic and technological reach. As many people have elaborated in the last one year, this will be a long-winding road leading to nowhere. But, if we decide to move in the direction of making India a strong nuclear power, we will have to conduct further nuclear and missile tests. The exhortions of the DAE and the DRDO about being satisfied with what they have done cannot be believed. We may be inviting a great deal more of wrath and sanctions from others, even though I personally am not against this option merely because of the fear of external sanctions. In any case, we may finally have to face some sanctions even if we take a more principled stand and proceed down another road, if that stand happens to be inconvenient to the P-5 (Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council). But the approach to nuclearisation will certainly lead us to further isolation, even from our few current friends. Economic ruin is sure to follow and it will, at the end of the day, leave us a depleted and exhausted nation. Do we deserve such a future?

A saner approach would be to go back to the essential elements of the 1988 RGAP, update our thinking, and prepare a programme for implementation in the context of our recent actions and other world developments since 1988. Basically, this will mean that India will have to stand firm on its earlier stand of not signing the CTBT. The consequences of such action could, in the short term, include further economic sanctions and technology denials, having to settle for a lower growth rate of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP); acceptance of a slower pace of industrialisation; and the need to tighten our belts in general.

The essential elements of this overall strategy, as I see it, should be as follows:

1. Refuse to sign the CTBT in its present form.

2. Simultaneously, through the unanimous consent of Parliament, put through a Resolution or Act which will commit any Indian government to:

a) Effecting a moratorium on all nuclear weapons tests of any kind, as well as missile tests;

b) Deferring all actions towards weapons and missile fabrication, nuclear weaponisation and deployment;

c) Non-use of existing nuclear warheads against any nation; and

d) Preventing the export of weapons-related technologies or materials to any country.

3) Update the RGAP. Retain its core thrust and modify the operational clauses in the context of our recent actions and international developments since 1988, but aim to produce a text which can eventually be presented as a draft treaty document for international consideration.

The above parliamentary resolution/Act shall, however, be valid only for a period of three years from the date of its clearance and shall not apply beyond this period if substantial progress has not been achieved on the Nuclear Weapons Convention by then.

In pursuit of this policy, India should solicit and obtain the cooperation, participation and concurrence of the threshold nuclear powers, especially Pakistan, as well as countries that constitute the NAM, to thrash out an approach based on common resolve. With the NAM countries in the vanguard, India could table a resolution in the U.N. General Assembly, asking the U.N. to instruct the Conference on Disarmament to open negotiations on a time-bound (modified) Nuclear Weapons Convention for the verifiable elimination of weapons of mass destruction within a mutually agreed time-frame. It was India which co-sponsored such a request to the U.N. in the past along with Western powers to initiate discussions that eventually led to the present CTBT. Now, it will be the turn of the Western nations to join us in putting this problem to rest finally. We should be optimistic in this overall effort and the nation must stand together as one to face the adverse consequences, if any. Even if all this fails, it will kindle a feeling of true national pride, unlike the hollow euphoria that followed the nuclear tests. And if we fail, we can always look at alternative options to ensure national security. The only thing that we would have lost is three years of patience and waiting. We may even be stronger when we bounce back and may have many more supporters who respect us, something we do not have today.

Dr. A. Gopalakrishnan is former Chairman of the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.