E-Paper
Full steam ahead
Fact is that India already has enough nuclear material to fabricate over 200 nuclear weapons -- the approximate size of the Chinese arsenal.
It is remarkable what two countries can achieve once they set their minds to it. In just one year, India and the US have upended a negative, and even hostile, relationship in the nuclear field, and are on the verge of replacing it with a mutually beneficial arrangement. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assured the country that the July 18, 2005, agreement and the March 2 plan for separating Indian civil and military reactors will form the core of the deal, and not some of the controversial add-ons in the legislation that has been passed separately by the US Senate and House of Representatives.
It’s important for India to focus on the operational aspects of the deal -- the waiver authority provided to the US President to begin civil nuclear cooperation with India -- and ignore the mixed bag of non-binding demands made through various amendments. Indian critics need to understand that the US is the one having to turn its past non-proliferation policy on its head, and this is not easy or palatable to some. But while this is understandable, what is not is the attitude of many Indian critics who are going out of their way to rouse patently false fears over the deal. Principal among these is that the arrangement will hurt India’s strategic capability. Fact is that India already has enough nuclear material to fabricate over 200 nuclear weapons -- the approximate size of the Chinese arsenal -- and with the help of the eight reactors in the military list it can make ten times more than that number, should it desire to do so.
The real aim of these critics is to ensure that the nuclear issue remains a pill stuck in the throat of India and the US, one that will not go up or down, but create permanent discomfort in their relationship. Hopefully, mainstream India and the US will see things in their proper perspective and move ahead decisively to complete this win-win arrangement.
