Like several prominent bloggers, this blog shares the perspective that the Indo-US Nuclear deal is hardly if ever debated. The fact that none of the movers and shakers of India have thought it fit to bring this to public attention gives credence to the gnawing feeling that bugs me: that the issue has been deliberately stifled.

What little appears in the media is tilted in the obvious direction. One rather pompous example:

India’s problem: We have 80-odd bombs, but not enough sense [.] In a world where nuclear arsenals are getting smaller, except in South Asia, our minimal nuclear deterrence does not require more plutonium from our breeder reactors.

Halfway through the article, I was befuddled. R. Rajaraman (?) didn’t sound like a writer I had read earlier; he wasn’t an Indian Express staff writer or a regular columnist. It took me about a few seconds’ scrolling to figure it out: he was a hired troll emeritus professor at Mecca JNU. Not merely an emeritus prof but an emeritus in Physics! I reckon JNU believes in training its scientific faculty in the Ideology.

I’ve been busy catching up with work and stuff so haven’t really followed news lately. When I did today, I found that this isn’t the first time the Indian Express has “debated” the N deal. Cynical Nerd has tracked their earlier “debates” pretty eloquently, I should say.

Since it does not want to put the fast breeder reactor on the civilian list, it cannot, by the same logic, put those civilian power reactors that feed it with plutonium under safeguards. As a consequence the civilian list that India offered to the US last month had become embarrassingly short.

Embarassingly short, my foot. Former AEC Chief P.K. Iyengar asserts that top U.S. research centers like Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) serves both as civil and military facility. This is also the case with France’s elite Comissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA). Why expect the contrary from India? And then Indian Express throws this bombshell:

It is important to note here that the prototype fast breeder reactor was still in the making then and has now reached an advanced stage. The sense always was that this would be used for producing energy and for this purpose, India would not lose out by putting it on the civilian list.

IE is flatly wrong on this. The Fast Breeder always had a civil + military part. Under Dr. Homo Bhabhas pioneering “three-stage programme”, small amounts of Uranium (U.) from heavy water reactors are used to breed Plutonium (Pu) in fast breeder reactors which will eventually burn India’s vast Thorium (Th) resources in a thorium breeder reactor. Eventually they will be commercialized, but at this point they are still in experimental stage. There is no reason in “hurrying-up” and prematurely declare it as civil.

Raja Mohan still persists with maligning the DAE with his fallacious arguments:

The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) says it does not need too much of international cooperation to expand nuclear power generation in this country. It wants the nation to wait two or more decades for a large nuclear power programme. Because the DAE wants to plough the lonely furrow of technological isolation.

The DAE’s leadership is clearly affected by something akin to the Stockholm Syndrome. Like the hostage who begins to love the captors after prolonged incarceration, the DAE, having been cut off from international cooperation for decades, is relishing its isolation.

The current divisive debate within the government is polarised around two broad views. One is a grand strategic vision that underlines the importance of fully implementing the nuclear deal with the US that offers India long awaited political recognition as a nuclear weapon state and facilitates expansive international nuclear energy cooperation with India.

The other is a narrow approach focused on securing the limited objective of fuel supplies to the Tarapur reactors and an option to import a handful of reactors that would be fuelled by enriched uranium from external sources. Thank you very much, we are not interesting in anything else from the world.

Heh, nice psyops attempt with ‘grand strategic’ vs ‘narrow’. India is a nuclear weapons state no matter what others think. Also note that President Bush announced his GNEP proposal to American citizens during the annual State Of The Union address as late as January 26th - hence Indian negotiators/scientists are not likely to have known this. Raja Mohan here seems eager to push this new offer down India’s throat without giving sufficient breathing space.

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Ah! the usual suspects: Raja Mohan and K Subrahmanyam.

Rajaraman joins their brilliant league.