Secular-Right India

Its a pleasure to learn that the two brightest minds have collaborated here. Keep up the good work. Great post and ignore the pot shots.

Brahma Chellaney has been savaging this deal from the start. All his mythical arguments are irrelevant for this deal except the first one. Is India less isolated by this deal? The answer surely is yes. This deal is about getting uranium from other nations. If NSG agrees to supply uranium, the deal was worth it.

Yes, nuclear power station cost $2 billion. But so does a coal or gas thermal plant. And no one is forcing India to buy nuclear power plants. And it is not binding on India to buy it from US. It can get them from France or Russia (or Germany, for that matter). Although, AEC is filled with smart people, India does not have the infrastructure like many world class research labs and universities research programs and more importantly funding to get cutting edge technology done quickly - not take 3 decades to perfect a new technology.

And this argument that India is going from oil-cartel to uranium-cartel is fallacious. So what? India doesn't have a lot of either within its borders. What are the brilliant alternatives?

For historically bad leadership, from, especially, Indira Gandhi, India did not join the nuclear club as soon as it had the capability - in the mid-60s. Now, India did not renegotiating NPT with US - which US cannot do so by itself. China has a clear advantage because it became a nuclear power before the west started to crack down on anyone else having nuclear weapons with internal laws and global rules. In this regard India cannot be compared with China.

And India already has moratorium on testing. Despite what Senator Biden says there is no cap on India weapon building. While it would be foolish to so, India can build next the nuclear reactor and say it is for military purpose. (Where would it get the uranium from? – That’s why it was important to have Breeder reactor out of IAEA purview for alternative thorium, which India got.) If China tests weapons or India is threatened, India should and will test.

And twenty years from now, with far richer India well integrated in world economy, will US really want to impose sanctions on India? Good luck for US for trying.

Yes, nuclear power station cost $2 billion. But so does a coal or gas thermal plant.

Well, then why not build more coal and gas plants AND maintain soveriegin control over your nuke plants without letting in the IAEA thugs? Do you remember that part of the IAEA contingent in Iraq was CIA spies? If you don't believe me, Google it.

And no one is forcing India to buy nuclear power plants.

Then why are you giving away control over your entire nuclear program for the *permission* to buy them?

And this argument that India is going from oil-cartel to uranium-cartel is fallacious. So what? India doesn't have a lot of either within its borders.

My God, this is so retarded. India may not have either of them, but which one is easier to procure? Which one has less restrictive trade? ONGC Videsh has been buying companies and oil reserves all around the world. Canada has more oil than Saudi Arabia and anyone can go there, *buy* the right to produce oil and ship it anywhere in the world. You can buy coal from Kazakhastan or Vietnam or whatever as long as you can pay cash. Can you do that for Uranium? No. Why? Because the NSG *controls* the trade and you can only buy Uranium if Uncle Sam lets you. They can stop fuels to your nukes and cause blackouts. But they cannot do it if your power plan runs on coal that can be imported without hindrance. Do you not understand even such a simple power strategy? A problem at which you can throw money is NOT a problem. A problem that you CANNOT solve with money is a real problem - usually because someone else has go you by your nuts.

Shakes his head in disbelief at the naivete and walks away in disgust...

My sense is that the deal will be passed by the US Senate.

Bingo! Something does tell me that their protests to the contrary are phoney. In fact, this may be yet another negotiating tactic by the Bush Admin : isn't it a little naive of Indians to assume that the Senata and the Admin are antagonists? They may have adversairal relationship with each other on domestic issues but when it comes to issues of American national interest, I don't believe that they will desist from driving the best deal for the US.

This, in fact, shows another point of complete stupidity by Indian negotiatiors. The run-around by US Congress is not new : it's a tried and tested strategy by the US in the past. This is why, for example, WTO members insist that the US negotiator first obtain the Presidenital Trade Promotion Authority before even talking to them. The TPA is a law passed by the US Congress that allows the President to negotiate a deal with the understanding that the Congress can subsequently either pass or reject a deal only in its *entirety* but cannot introduce any modifications or riders. This is an elementary principle pf protecting yourself from shadow-negotiating with the US Congress, especially when you are not even at the table!

Why couldn't the Indians have insisted on getting the equivalent of the TPA for the nuke deal even before beginning to negotiate? And if they failed to do something even so basic - something that every international business 101 course in any MBA program teaches about trade negotiations - to protect India's negotiating position, is it a big stretch that they would, in fact, be incompetent enough to give away everything else as well?

Here's what will happen next,. The fun has only begun : watch the US Congress introduce as many restrictions on India as possible. Remember the Jonathan Swift story where the little people tie down Gulliver with thousand strings? You will watch it happen to the nuke deal in the US COngress, and yes, the deal will eventually pass. the US will then present it as a fait accompli to the Indians and ask them to take it or leave it. Moron Indian politicians will be more concerned about saving face then protecting India's interests by that point. Therefore, they will bend over and take it up their you-know-where. Check and mate.

Jaffna, Cynical Nerd: what is your take on Nitin's view expressed in Primary Red's column? And why Iran over Saudi Arabia? This is an interesting debate.

TPA:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Trade_Promotion_Authority_Act

The bottomline is India's energy problems can be fixed by reforming the power sector and/or buying hydrocarbons and/or investing in alternate energy sources such as biodiesel and ethanol. Look at Brazil : in a span of less than 20 years, it has developed an economy that is entirely independent of hydrocarbon imports and produces all of its energy needs within the country. Why give up nuclear sovereignty for a partial and expensive means procuring energy that creates a strategic dependence upon the NSG cartel which could've been also procured by alternative means at a lower cost *without* introducing such strategic dependency? Basic principles of strategic analysis will show you that this is just utterly stupid.

Anonymous, I am not sure you need to be that disgusted with arguments you don't agree with.

My point is this: If India needs a nuclear industry, India needs this deal. It doesn't matter whether ONGC can buy gas fields and CIL can buy coal fields in Latin America or Central Asia. It is not a matter of either or. It's both. Where are you going to get uranium if you want to keep building nuclear reactors whether privately or non-privately?

And what is this nonsense about some how Condi Rice is going to scuttle India's strategic program? She can say what she wants. (She also said she had proof that Saddam had WMD program.)

The problem with people who think suddenly Washington can control all aspects of India strategic program is that they give too much credence to yapping in Washington, not much to fact on the ground. Just because some people bark in Washington, it doesn't become true.

And BTW, China is nuclear power under NPT. India can't be on par with China when it comes to having much negotiating power with respect to uranium (Jaffna, I am not comparing India and China in other aspects – agree with most of what you say). That's the current state. To say we have to reject the deal because China did or didn't something is silly.

Your power talks are good and fine. But they also have to be based on facts on the ground.

And I don’t agree with you that the stupid brown Indian negotiators will take the deal with changes made in US congress with a begging bowl. Not going to happen.

My point is this: If India needs a nuclear industry, India needs this deal.

Now we're getting somewhere. India does not *need* a nuclear industry, india needs *energy*. Big difference. If India takes the same $20-30 billion that it would cost to build a nuclear industry and redploy it in other energy sources domoestically or abroad, India will get energy that is a)much less expensive in terms of $/MW and b)will not compromise its nuclear sovereinty. That's exactly why this is such a bad deal : you bargained away your nuclear soveriengty for a more expensive source of energy that comes with creating a strategic weakness through dependence upon uranium from the NSG cartel that creates a sword of Damoclese hanging on your head and therefore makes you less powerful. For an added bonus, you get to play host to the CIA spies through the IAEA. Pray tell me how this is of any benefit to India at all.

And BTW, China is nuclear power under NPT. India can't be on par with China when it comes to having much negotiating power with respect to uranium.

Exactly! In that case, shouldn't India's objective be to *acquire* enough negotiating power *until* it can negotiate from a position of strength? Why negotiate *now* from a position of weakness and give away a huge source of leverage?

Just because some people bark in Washington, it doesn't become true.

Dude, this is what they are going to get signed in a law by the US Congress that the President of the US is obligated to enforce!! And even if none of this comes to fruition, why has India opened its nuclear lungi and bent over for the enjoyment of the CIA spies?

And I don’t agree with you that the stupid brown Indian negotiators will take the deal with changes made in US congress with a begging bowl.

Well, they have not achieved anything so far that would inspire confidence. A hardline negotiaor would have got the US to get a Presidential nuclear negotiating authority before even starting to talk and then walked away from any deal that is even an inch shorter than the deal the Chinese signed with the US. Walking away wuold've been great because the inexorable forces of history are on India's side : India has to do *nothing* but just sit tight for another 10-20 years, get the Thorium cycle going and become the third largest economy of about 8-10 Trillion dollars real GDP and the NWS status would've automatically come to India. The NPT is getting slowly unravelled anyway, all India had to do was sit on the sidelines and watch the fun as the US got entangled into North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and so on. Instead India had to do it now and give away the farm. As a patriotic Indian, my blood boils to see how India is cutting off its hands and relegating itself to a second-rate power.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/apr2006/gb20060412_847458.htm

"As its impact on the U.S. economy expands, China is also growing less vulnerable to American pressure on key issues".

India-US deal will destroy nuclear research
Deccan Chronicle, 15 April 2006
By P.K. Iyengar and M. Gupta

The initial impression of the July 18 Joint Statement as an outline of the nuclear deal Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed with President George W. Bush was that it may herald a new chapter in India-US scientific cooperation. But the PM's suo motu statement in Parliament of March 7, 2006 and the recent release of the "Separation Plan," disabused the scientific community of any such hope.

Particularly surprising was the Indian government agreeing to put research facilities like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR); Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC), Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP), Institute for Plasma Research, Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Institute of Physics, Tata Memorial Centre, Board of Radiation and Isotope Technology, and Harish Chandra Research Institute, which are legitimately safeguards-irrelevant, under International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards.

This is especially disturbing since the Prime Minister owned up to the fact that India had surrendered the right to decide for itself which facilities will come under IAEA safeguards. Moreover, since the Manmohan Singh government has virtually accepted a non-nuclear weapons State status for the country in the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime, negotiating India-specific safeguards and Additional Protocol with the IAEA, will be worrisome. It is well known that the Additional Protocol has evolved in recent years specifically to deal with "rogue States" attempting to acquire sensitive technology clandestinely.

The problem has clearly arisen due to artificially imposed requirements of categorising the various components of the Department of Atomic Energy into "civil" or "military." Thus the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research have been rendered strictly "military" to avoid attracting safeguards, when more than 90 per cent of the work carried out in these institutions is "civilian."

It is well known that safeguard inspections by IAEA when applied to non-nuclear States, are extremely intrusive, immensely disruptive, and are often conducted in an atmosphere vitiated by suspicion. Without any substantiated assurances to the contrary, there is little reason to assume that such will not be the case for India. That the "judicious" use of suspicion may serve to irreversibly tilt the balance is best illustrated by the Iranian affair where the right of an NPT signatory to develop technology (in this case, the centrifuge to enrich uranium), is subject to advance approval from the IAEA.

The resulting inspection regime, if applied to fundamental research facilities in India, would imply that any or all research may come under scrutiny or have to be first vetted by the large 65 member Board of Governors ruling the intricate IAEA bureaucracy. With India not being a Non-Proliferation Treaty signatory, would the topics "allowed" for scientific investigation not be decided within the framework of rules applicable to non-nuclear weapons countries or, worse, rogue States? What would be the yardstick for deciding what research is "sanctioned"? Would this mean that "civilian" scientists cannot collaborate with their "military" counterparts since separation must be maintained?

To extend the argument, since such constraints would necessarily have to be focused on indigenous research, criteria could be selective (foreign collaborations with "acceptable" countries may not be scrutinised) and/or restrictive (it may become increasingly difficult for India to choose its research collaborators if they happen to belong to the "wrong" country). In such an environment, there will be little scope for pursuing India's tried and proven self-reliance policy in the future since all indigenous work would invite invasive scrutiny.

It has been mentioned that in the event of a national crisis, perhaps none of the trained workforce, equipment or any technology fall-out from such research will be available for military work since India has accepted "in perpetuity" safeguards on all civilian facilities and purportedly given up its sovereign right to cite national security reasons for withdrawal — a privilege enjoyed by all technologically advanced nations.

Such an artificial "segregation" would create multiple problems of its own. There is adequate proof that the DAE's applied programmes have drawn heavily from human resources developed in these institutions. In the absence of sensible and responsible negotiations, if inspections include "pursuit" in principle as they may in the case of nuclear fuel, associated universities, grant funding institutions such as the Department of Science and Technology and other organisations like the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, etc., will be forced to submit to humiliating and intrusive supervision.

Gone will be the days of unfettered technology development via collaborative research with, say, a private biotechnology company. An international "licence-permit raj" on Indian scientific creativity will be here to stay and the army of IAEA inspectors will invade all related public and private sector entities, sometimes even without prior intimation. At the very least it would guarantee that scientists and engineers would be endlessly tied up in bureaucratic red-tape so as to satisfy an infinite number of queries so that very little constructive work is actually achieved.

It is far from true that the entities on the list are "merely" academic institutions when one realises that BARC in its entirety was born from TIFR which was the first institute of its kind in the nation devoted to the physical sciences and mathematics. Recall that Homi Bhabha's vision was to build up indigenous capability through promoting manpower generation in the basic sciences. He wrote in 1944 to J.R.D. Tata that the Tata Institute should be created in order to produce the experts for nuclear energy in India when it becomes feasible. With the firm grounding that such training inculcates, professionals can adapt themselves with alacrity to the requirements of creating technology and its spin-offs.

Indeed, this has been the way all technological innovations have happened throughout the world. To enable this in India the DAE created autonomous institutions like SINP, VECC and others to create and sustain a strong and wide base of specialisations providing an unshakeable foundation for a healthy technological future. Such institutions have also enabled us to initiate new research, such as in the fusion programme. It helped India gain entrance to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project, and register successes in computing technologies, and space and nano-particle research and a whole gamut of laser based scientific research to name a few areas.

Regardless of the exact nature of the safeguards, the scientific community in India is extremely upset and alarmed that the autonomy of these institutions may now be severely eroded and their research programmes subjected to the worst external interference. Having been put to great inconvenience of the kind related here. NPT signatory Brazil, for example, has finally been forced to object to IAEA inspections on projects funded by the Brazilian atomic energy agency in the university sector.

But as a non-NPT state, the Indian government may not have retained an escape route in its haste to please Washington. In advanced nuclear countries such as the United States, premier institutions and universities funded by its atomic energy commission would consider it inconceivable to give up their autonomy, which is jealously preserved to enable new and innovative research in the frontiers of science to take seed, grow and flourish.

There can be no artificial constraints on the dissemination of scientific thought and the world has reaped the benefits of a free system, as has India. To put centres of excellence under safeguards of whatever type, would be to serve a body blow to the future of indigenous Indian science. Since scientific and technological strength has brought us to where we are today, this is obviously too high a price to pay. The negative ramifications of such a drastic step would be hard to envisage in their entirety.

On the whole, it is clear that inserting these facilities into the already complex problem of separating the DAE's civilian and military programmes as required by the nuclear deal is a fatal mistake. If it has happened as a result of bureaucratic oversight, this must be corrected. Scientists must come forward with their concerns and initiate a constructive dialogue with the Prime Minister's Office and the ministry of external affairs to prevent such an outcome. The government of India needs to be far more transparent and to consult with a range of retired and serving scientists from the science establishment before actively assisting in the demise of basic research in this country.

[Dr P.K. Iyengar retired as Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission. Dr M. Gupta is a physicist at the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, Karnataka]