Strategic Sell Out

The controversial civilian nuclear cooperation deal between India and the US fuelled controversy and opposition to in a way that no foreign policy issue has done in recent memory. The four expert contributors to this book have written extensively about the nuclear deal. This is a compilation of their writings in newspapers and journals.

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This happened for the good reason that the country's 'Janes-faced' or dual-purpose nuclear energy programme is the jewel in the crown of the Indian state and spearheads the longstanding policy of government to make Indian an advanced scientific and technological power. The nuclear deal has come to be seen as undermining this national intent and ambition by substituting self-reliance with risky dependence on foreign Countries and Companies. The deal promised facilitation of trade and commerce in frontline nuclear technologies. But the only technology readily on offer is seen to be the light water reactor that are finding it difficult to be peddled elsewhere, including in their own countries, to their own people, because of the widespread concerns about nuclear accidents, radiation hazards, and environmental damage, a 'la Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. The fact that India was unlikely easily to access other technologies after the enabling US law the so-called "Hyde Act", was legislated in December 2006 by the US Congress. This Act expressly forbids sale or transfer of any technology related to uranium enrichment, plutonium reprocessing, and heavy water production.