S. Raghotham
Let me start with a little story: a woman and her baby used to live on the edges of a jungle. Since the place was full of snakes, the woman also kept a mongoose in the house to guard her baby when she was out. One day, when the woman had gone to fetch water, a venomous snake entered the house and slithered towards the sleeping baby. The watchful mongoose sprang on it and after a tough fight killed the snake and saved the baby.
Having done its job, the mongoose went and stood outside the door, waiting for the lady of the house to return. The lady came shortly, holding a heavy pitcher of water. Seeing the blood-splattered face of the mongoose, the woman thought the mongoose had killed her baby, instead of protecting it. She smashed the heavy pitcher on the mongoose, killing it instantly.
Then she ran into the house in great anguish – only to find her baby alive and smiling innocently. Next to it was the dead snake.
Only then did she realise what she had done -- without thinking, without waiting to know what had transpired, she had killed the mongoose that had protected her baby so valiantly.
This story from an old movie song flashed across my mind several times this past week as I have read one journalist or analyst after another accuse India’s nuclear scientists of every conceivable kind of undemocratic behaviour – simply because Dr. Anil Kakodkar wouldn’t allow the Fast Breeder Reactors to be placed under safeguards as demanded by the US.
One journalist called the Department of Atomic Energy a nuclear ‘Bombay Club’. She went on to write ‘‘The problem here is that India's nuclear establishment, like the country's protected industry, has existed in a cocoon for decades. The very mention of competition, inspections, invites the "patriotic" complaint that a sellout of India's nuclear sovereignty was on the cards. India's nuclear scientists…continue to labour under some serious but misplaced insecurity’’.
There have been many more who have written ridiculing, even abusing, Kakodkar and his team. They all claimed to be writing to serve India’s ‘enlightened national interest’.
But the latest – and probably the least expected – attack on the nuclear establishment has come from none other than the venerable K. Subrahmanyam. Writing in the Wall Street Journal of February 22, Subrahmanyam said, ‘‘Prime Minister Singh, in turn, will have to ensure that his efforts to fulfil the responsibilities that India has accepted are not disrupted by those who are used to functioning under secrecy and without public accountability – or international competition’’.
This, from a man who was arguably the pre-eminent Indian advocate for India’s nuclear bomb for over four decades (thank him for that!) and who recommended that India should have at least 150 bombs and warheads to ensure deterrence!
Et tu, Brutus?
After all, no other strategic analyst knows better than Subrahmanyam that India could not have become a nuclear weapons power without the secrecy, without the subterfuge under which the nuclear establishment has functioned, and served the country well.
And certainly, no other analyst knows better than Subrahmanyam that India is not yet there -- we haven’t proved capability to build anything bigger than a 15 to 20 KT bomb/warhead, we don’t yet have a missile that can reach significant targets in China, let alone the US, and we don’t even have enough numbers of even the small bombs/warheads. We still have a long way to go.
In 1974, Raja Ramanna, R. Chidambaram, Anil Kakodkar were all heroes. In 1998, Chidambaram, Kakodkar, K. Santhanam and President Kalam were all heroes. They took on false names, they played football over the Pokhran testing ground to cheat American satellites, and they conducted the tests. They were heroes then for the games of secrecy they played.
What has changed now? Well, we have come to have a prime minister who thinks the nuclear establishment needs economic reforms!
Look at the accusations being made at our nuclear scientists:
They are used to secrecy and are loathe to give it up: Well, why was secrecy established and who wanted it in the first place? Would India’s nuclear programme have been shrouded in secrecy if all that the nation wanted was a nuclear power programme, completely civilian and no weapons ambitions?
The nuclear establishment wasn’t always secretive and isolated. Homi Bhabha himself instituted the widest possible cooperation between western nuclear establishments and the Indian – and that included the American, Canadian, British, French, and many others.
It was only after India refused to sign the NPT that the cloak-and-dagger games had to begin. Once Indira Gandhi decided in 1972 to pursue the weapons programme, the Indian nuclear establishment was forced to withdraw into isolation and institute measures of secrecy. This has only increased with the pressure brought upon India by the US.
If India’s political masters could withstand those pressures, then there would have been no need for secrecy. The scientists didn’t need the secrecy and isolation, the nation needed them to be secretive and isolated.
They are not open to peer review and international competition: What international competition is the nuclear cooperation going to bring about? India’s nuclear programme is on a completely different trajectory from that of the US or indeed of any other country. Will India’s PHWRs be required to compete with Westinghouse AP-1000s under the nuclear deal?
Unless, of course, the whole idea is to kill the indigenous nuclear programme marching towards the thorium phase and buy only imported stuff, like we do for our military forces. All these years I have been under the impression that that was the plan of the US, not of the Indian, government. May be I am wrong.
India’s nuclear and space programmes, run on shoestring budgets, will of course not be able to compete with programmes that have spent nearly $ 10 trillion ($ 6 trillion on the US weapons programme alone) in the last fifty years or so. Those are adorned with ‘gold-plated’ technologies, shining surfaces and will be marketed by white men in grey suits.
But, even so, those international competitors will not be able to compete with the common sense and innovativeness of Indian nuclear scientists. Those were partly the gifts of international sanctions (and thanks to those who tormented us!)
That brings us to the question of peer reviews. I know of no scientist who does not want to share with other scientists all the exciting things he has found or made, especially with those from abroad and those considered (wrongly) superior. Indian nuclear scientists have much to be proud of and much to show the world. They have been shackled by the nation’s need for a weapons programme that is based on a strategy of nuclear ambiguity.
Only someone who knows nothing of the excitement of science and discovery can accuse scientists of hiding from peers.
They shun accountability: Accountability can be of many types, depending on who is asking and for what purpose. The nuclear establishment produces annual reports, gives statements of accounts, etc. Obviously, because there are secret parts to the entire programme, there would also be secret finances coming in and going out. The prime minister knows what’s happening, doesn’t he.
There is also accountability with regard to targets: you said you would produce so much power, you are producing only so much. Why? The nuclear establishment must be called on to explain. But even here the reasons are not far to seek. If you are asked to produce power for the electrical grid as well as plutonium for the weapons programme from the same reactor, it should be understood that power production would suffer. It has suffered, and it has always been understood that it would.
Why have a few journalists and analysts suddenly started to have this huge problem with secrecy in the atomic department? They didn’t demand openness from it all these years. And even now they are not doing it on behalf of the Indian people.
Why are some people interested in prying out only the nuclear establishment’s secrets while secrecy continues to exist in every other department, every aspect of Indian government? Who is it actually that wants to pry open the DAE’s secrets?
