In Part I, I argued, based on a report by Ashley Tellis, one of the principal architects of the India-US strategic partnership and the nuclear deal, that India can well increase and sustain its nuclear power production with its own indigenous uranium resources and as such it is not necessary to bow to the conditions placed upon it by an imperialistic US Congress merely to be able to buy uranium from external sources.
Now, here are some facts and figures to get a better perspective on the entire issue of India’s electricity generation requirements and the place of nuclear power in it:
India’s current installed electricity generation capacity from all sources – coal, hydro, alternatives and renewables, nuclear -- is 123 GW. For continued economic growth at 6-8% with an attendant rise in per capita power consumption from 600 kW to 1000 kW, India will need to add a minimum of 90 GW of installed capacity by 2015.
Of this, current plans and projects underway are to install 50 GW of coal-based capacity. Projects are also underway that will add about 10 GW of hydro power in the coming decade. There are other hydro projects totalling 10-12 GW that are at various stages of planning and approval. If gas importation projects proceed, gas-fired power plants would contribute another 16 GW of installed capacity. Various alternative energy sources would add another 5-10 GW.
In effect then, even as per present plans, some 80-90 GW of non-nuclear power generation capacity will have been installed by 2015. All of these sources, however, have much higher exploitable potentials. What’s missing is the government’s will to exert itself in terms of domestic policy reforms, privatisation and attractive foreign investment policies and to speed up implementation of planned projects to exploit those potentials.
India’s hydro power potential, for instance, is 150 GW but current installed capacity is only a fifth of that, at about 32 GW. Water resources in Arunachal Pradesh alone can be exploited for an additional 50 GW of installed capacity. The other north-eastern states and Jammu and Kashmir too have high potential for hydro power. Moreover, if India can get its neighbourhood diplomacy right, it could very well import hydro power from Nepal and Bhutan and gas from Bangladesh and Iran.Even with regard to coal-fired power, successive governments have failed to act with resoluteness to exploit India’s abundant resources. Coal mining capacity, just like uranium mining capacity, remains insufficient. Underinvestment in coal transportation infrastructure continues to hamper the nation’s power industry. This despite the fact that the government has always known that coal will remain the mainstay of Indian power production, providing about two-thirds of the installed capacity even in the longest term foreseeable.
As noted in Part I, even for nuclear power production, which is now being favoured, successive governments have failed to exploit and utilise the indigenous resources available. The government kept the expansion of uranium mining and milling capacity in abeyance for over a decade even as new power reactors were installed and the country’s nuclear power ambition grew.
It is in this background that the Manmohan Singh government is preparing to sign up to an autonomy-strangling nuclear cooperation agreement with the US.
Quite clearly, whether it is nuclear power or other methods of power production, India has not exerted itself to exploit all available resources. Rather, because of an inability, born of political cowardice and extreme lack of foresight, to take on difficult legislative and regulatory enterprises and make the sacrifices required to build the nation’s power (both as in electricity and as in strategic ability and influence) internally, we are being dragged headlong into a deal that entails a crippling strategic price for a little economic gain.
In the final analysis, what it would take to tide over temporary power problems is a little bit of political courage and integrity, and some fast implementation. As argued already, India has enough resources that can be exploited to produce power from a variety of sources, including uranium, for the next several decades.
Moreover, the immediate problem of fuel for Tarapur has been overcome following the supply of uranium from Russia. Even more importantly, France has declared that its own cooperation with India will not be held hostage to what happens in the US Congress. While the Manmohan Singh government seems only too keen to overlook the imperialism inherent in the act of the US Congress making legislation to circumscribe India’s options, France is not prepared to let itself be similarly circumscribed by an external power.
Considering all these factors, it now seems that India need not sign any nuclear cooperation agreement with the US in a panic and in the process compromise its strategic autonomy.
The case being made here is not that India should not sign a nuclear deal with the US. Rather that India should sign on to the right deal that would preserve its strategic autonomy while giving it access to global nuclear trade.
Signing on to the agreement now being approved by the US Congress – which does not bear even a remote relation to the Bush-Manmohan Singh Joint Statement of July 2005 -- would be a solution worse than the current problem itself.
Instead, India should now firmly reject the conditionalities of the present legislation even while signalling to the US that it would nevertheless continue to act in good faith as per the separation plan it gave the US. India can afford to wait until the US Congress is ready to pass legislation in the spirit of strategic partnership, not imperial law-making.
In particular, India must insist that the agreement with the US, while not assisting India’s nuclear weapons programme in anyway, should not also impinge on it by insisting on no further testing, fissile material production cut-off, halting reprocessing and enrichment, etc., nor should it seek to stamp on India’s freedom of action in the international arena, in matters such as Iran and the Proliferation Security Initiative.
Further, India must insist on the principle of proportionality with regard to the obligations it is to accept. Since all that India can import is uranium and power reactors for its civilian programme, in return it should only accept the separation plan as already agreed and safeguards on the imported fuel and all of the declared civilian reactors. All other conditions and so-called ‘non-binding references’, and their attached annual congressional review requirements, that intrude on any aspect of India’s weapons programme or on its foreign policy must be rejected.
Unless this is done, the nuclear cooperation agreement will amount to capitulation to US non-proliferation objectives, capitulation on an issue on which India has fought successfully for over 30 years, capitulation at just about the moment when India is about to rise as a global power.
Ultimately, there is more than one way in which to produce power for the electrical grid. India can build new uranium mining and milling capacity on a war footing; India can reform coal-mining and build coal transportation infrastructure. With a little bit of political courage, nation-wide power sector reforms can be undertaken to remove inefficiencies and increase private sector participation. Such cheap vote-bank politics as free power schemes can be done away with which would help solve both power and water-table problems. India is blessed with abundant sunlight, and sincere effort to increase solar power consumption can be undertaken as a national mission mandatory for every household and business. Energy can also be conserved through a variety of measures.
But there is only one currency of power in international politics, one guarantee of security in a world of nuclear weapons states – the possession of and readiness to use a large and high-quality nuclear arsenal.
A large and high-quality nuclear arsenal is something that India does not yet have. What’s worse, despite all the spin by the government’s propagandists in the media, the nuclear deal as it is being offered by the US Congress will put in danger even our existing small, unready nuclear weapons capability which at present is nothing more than a technology demonstrator.
The Manmohan Singh government should not endanger even this capability and subject India to the US policy to ‘‘seek to halt the increase of (India’s) nuclear arsenals…to promote their reduction and eventual elimination’’ as stated in the nuclear deal bill passed by the US congressional committees.
