Debate on deal: not rocket science

By A N Mitra

The Indo-US Nuclear deal has understandably generated a good deal of controversy, mostly political. Unfortunately, the great emotion that has marked the debate inhibits an objective assessment of the subject. First, look at the political aspects. It all started as a historic initiative of the Vajpayee government symbolised by Pokhran II. This predictably caused a furore worldwide, with the then Chinese president Hu Jintao, joining hands with US counterpart Bill Clinton, in condemning this act of ‘presumption’ by a nuclear have-not.

Not content with this, they overtly prodded Pakistan to follow suit. Nearer home, the Congress found it difficult to overcome its oppositional stance. It refused to pat the NDA government on it back for this unique achievement. But look at the way the scenario has changed in less a decade. The NDA government has fallen, but not before making amends with the same US government of Bill Clinton and even starting negotiations on a nuclear deal.

The deal Prime Minister Manmohan Singh concluded after prolonged negotiations with the US and with the full involvement of representatives from both government and the nuclear establishment, may therefore be regarded as an ‘analytic continuation’ of the earlier efforts by the NDA. Admittedly, there was bound to be a lot of give and take in an agreement of this kind.Of course, it is not easy to judge its overall impact, yet a good index is the response of our two neighbours. The profound unhappiness in China over this coming together of the world’s two largest democracies and Pakistan’s desire to be given a corresponding privilege, speak for themselves. To come to the scientific aspects of the issue.

A lot of fuss has been made about not taking the scientific community into confidence. BJP leader, Murli Manohar Joshi, in an interaction with this website's newspaper emphasised his party’s deep commitment to the scientific community. But to what end? True, our scientific workforce is numerically the second or third largest in the world, but its collective impact must be judged by the degree of ‘coherence’ it enjoys as a community.

In this respect, some truths are unavoidable. While it is true that a few scientists have acquired great international prominence in their individual capacity, the same is unfortunately not the case with the community as a whole. And the reason for this has to do with the peculiar ethos that pervades all sections of our society, scientists included: individual interests are placed above those of the community. For the scientific community this trait often shows up in the pathetic manner a typical member of the community looks to his western counterparts for ideas, oblivious of compatriots nearer home — something almost unheard of in scientific communities elsewhere.

In the long run, this trait militates against the formation of a collective school of thought at the level of ‘intellectual software’.Fortunately the trait is less noticeable at the level of scientific hardware (atomic energy/space science), thanks to a modicum of professional discipline enforced from the top, which ensures some sort of professional coherence. And whatever little that has been articulated by the community in the matter of these nuclear negotiations has been articulated by precisely this section. Now what could be the possible benefits, if any, from the deal itself?

The very first one concerns the procurement of nuclear fuel to meet civilian energy needs. It is too late in the day to ask if we could have been self-sufficient with our own efforts. Often the question has been raised about our vast thorium reserves, which, if they had been efficiently tapped during these 60 years of Independence, might well have served our energy needs.China would not have taken much time in such matters since the gap between knowing and doing simply does not exist in that country.

But, in India, even 60 years are inadequate. We are therefore left with the choice of either importing nuclear fuel or standing on prestige and doing nothing. The latter stance may suit the Left, but both the UPA, and the NDA before that, have quite sensibly chosen to adopt the former alternative. Other benefits include those related to several scientific and industrial sectors, which will now receive a range of dual-use equipment and components, which were previously denied to India because of their potential applications in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. Of course nothing comes without a price, but presumably the price was found acceptable. All said and done, the biggest benefit from this deal is ending India’s isolation from the global nuclear community.