Category Archives: INDIA DOMESTIC

Piecing Together the History of India’s Nuclear Journey

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(Review: Ploughshares and Swords by Jayita Sarkar)

Published in The Wire on April 16, 2023

India’s nuclear programme has received a fair amount of scholarship in the last two decades. Yet, the majority of it suffers from a common weakness – the attempt to fit it into a Western narrative, perhaps to make it more easily understandable to Western audiences or even to Indian scholars who are reared on a diet of western IR theories. A key reason is that there is little written by the central actors themselves, the dilemmas and challenges they faced, as well as the economic and political compulsions under which they had to address the challenges and resolve the dilemmas. 

Dr. Jayita Sarkar’s Ploughshares and Swords is a welcome addition that mines a rich seam of information, especially the linkages between the nuclear and space programmes during the late 1960s and early 1970s, not hitherto explored, though it also suffers from the same weakness when it seeks to impose a structural framework on the sequence of events.

The title – Ploughshares and Swords, is a good window into Dr Sarkar’s approach by emphasising the dual use character of both nuclear and space technologies. However, this duality dilemma was not new for the Indian scientists. Indian scientists like Homi Bhabha, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar, K. S. Krishnan and Vikram Sarabhai had studied abroad and rubbed shoulders with the global scientific elite.

In fact, it was present even for the scientists involved with the Manhattan project. The destructive character of the nuclear weapons coupled with the seductive promise of understanding the nature and structure of the world was apparent to the scientists as they wrestled with their political choices, determined in no small manner by how close they remained to Los Alamos and the corridors of power.

The secrecy surrounding the Manhattan project also led to the first betrayals. In the early 1940s, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a U.S. ally and partner. Yet, ideological rivalries prevented sharing of information. Klaus Fuchs was an unlikely spy. A German refugee who fled to U.K. and then to the U.S. passed on key design elements of the Fat Man (the implosion type plutonium device dropped over Nagasaki) because he felt that the U.S. and the U.K. were treating their ally unfairly. There were others too – Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, Ted Hall, David Greenglass, Morris Cohen, and their inputs helped the Soviet programme catch up with the U.S. in both, the fission and fusion devices. As they stated during their trials, their betrayal was not for financial reasons; it was their way of resolving the nuclear dilemma in their moral universe. Ideological rivalry however was not the only driving force.

Controlling access to nuclear science and technology became a key U.S. objective and in 1946, the U.S. passed the Atomic Energy (McMohan) Act restricting access to nuclear information and handing over security at nuclear facilities to the FBI. Even the British scientists found themselves excluded. They proceeded to set up their own nuclear reactor and reprocessing unit to produce plutonium. Since the U.S. test site was unavailable and Canada seen as too risky, the islands in northwest Australia was the site chosen for their first test in 1952.

Yet, the U.S. also came up with the Atoms for Peace initiative in 1953 where the dilemma was sought to be resolved by transforming this threat to mankind by turning it into a beneficial technology, accessible to all. In 1957, this initiative led to the establishment of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as a vehicle to promote international cooperation for peaceful applications of nuclear science and technology. It took a decade when its role was transformed into becoming the verification arm of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).

While political leaders enjoy agency, it is always constrained, partly by domestic politics and partly by prevailing global events and tides. It is therefore difficult to look at specific decisions and label them as examples of ‘ploughshares’ or ‘swords’ and that analyse personalities accordingly. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru refrained from openly going down the weapons route but strongly supported the creation of the infrastructure that eventually made it possible. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi undertook an underground test in 1974 but remained content with describing it as a Peaceful Nuclear Explosion (PNE). Yet, in public perception, the two are seen very differently. This is what makes the Indian nuclear story so different and unique.

Attempts to fit decisions into categories – “the leaders of the nuclear program saw in nuclear fission the possibility to augment geopolitical goals of the territorial state as well as the technopolitical goals of the developmentalist state, leading to a larger dual-use enterprise simultaneously serving military and civilian ends,” are inherently problematic and always ex-post facto. It can enable Dr Sarkar to question which decisions are ‘ploughshares’ and which decisions are ‘swords’; the question is merely rhetorical because reality seldom comes in black and white, mostly it is in shades of grey. To describe the struggles of India’s nuclear and space programmes as ‘an embodiment of the notion of a revisionist post-colonial modernity through a “logic of self-differentiation” and improvisation’ (Dr Sarkar quoting Sudipta Kaviraj) only sounds glib.

The strength of Dr Sarkar’s book lies in exploring the diplomacy undertaken by India with the U.S., France, and the USSR during the decade of 1950s and 1960s, before the two nuclear superpowers found common cause in promoting the goal of non-proliferation. The close links between the scientists and diplomats as they engaged with their counterparts in Washington, Moscow, Paris, and Geneva is a lesson that was lost sight of in following decades and only got revived after 1998. During the 1970s and 1980s as the Cold War came to India’s doorstep, first with the 1971 crisis that led to the creation of Bangla Desh and the war with Pakistan and then the 1979 Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the gap between diplomatic rhetoric and national security interests grew. This is an issue that deserves greater academic scrutiny.

The linkages between the nascent space programme and the Department of Atomic Energy have never been written about in such detail. Dr Sarkar also dispels the idea that Dr Vikram Sarabhai was not as supportive of an underground test explosion as his predecessor Dr Bhabha had been. The impact of the Chinese nuclear test in 1964, both in India and in the U.S. and its impact on nuclear diplomacy provides political insights without the distraction of frameworks.

There are interesting questions that remains unexplored – if India’s plutonium reprocessing had begun in 1964, why did India not test before 1967 given that India was an active participant in the negotiations in Geneva on the NPT where the date of 1 January 1967 was being presented as the NPT’s cut-off date between the nuclear-weapon-states and the non-nuclear-weapon-states. Given that Indian scientists and diplomats had foreseen the political ramifications of safeguards and opposed it, why did the thought of testing not get explored? Were the limitations technical or political or both?

Another interesting question that could do with more study is Mrs Gandhi’s decision to test in 1974. Dr Sarkar does well to dispel the myth that the decision was a distraction from her domestic political troubles, by pointing out that the decision was taken in 1972 when she enjoyed peak popularity. What is not adequately explored is the decision to call it a PNE. In hindsight, it is clear that it only kept India in limbo, safeguarding its nuclear option. Though this is also something that makes India’s nuclear odyssey sui-generis.

This bridge was crossed in 1998 when two announcements were made, one relating to having conducted the nuclear weapon states and the second that India was a nuclear-weapon-state.

The Indian nuclear jigsaw puzzle is still incomplete but Dr Sarkar has successfully added many small and necessary pieces to provide greater content and give it greater shape.

*****

Awaiting Lift-off into the Second Space Age

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Published in the Hindu on April 10, 2023

The Space Age began in 1957 with the launch of satellite Sputnik 1 and in 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person in space. Neil Armstrong made history by walking on the moon in 1969. The First Space Age became reality.

Today, the Second Space Age is here. Though there is no precise date for its beginning, the contrast in today’s space domain is stark. Between the 1950s to 1991, a period dominated by the Cold War, 60 to 120 space launches took place annually and 93% of these were by the United States and the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) governments. Three decades later, not only are there many more actors in the space scene, but a majority are also private companies. Last year, there were 180 rocket/space launches, 61 by Elon Musk’s Space X; 90% of global space launches since 2020 are by and for the private sector.

India’s space journey begins

India made a modest entry into the First Space Age in the 1960s. The first sounding rocket, a U.S. supplied Nike-Apache, was launched at Thumba (Kerala) in 1963 and in 1969, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) was set up. It has come a long way since, with over 15000 employees and an annual budget between Rs 12000 crores-14000 crores in recent years. Through these decades, it has sought to prioritise societal objectives and benefits.

Its first major project was Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE) that involved leasing a U.S. satellite in 1975-76 for educational outreach across 2400 villages covering five million people. Satellite technology was a new mass communication tool. This led to the INSAT series in 1980s, followed by GSAT, that provided the backbone for the country’s tele-communication and broadcasting infrastructure.

This was followed by remote sensing capability development. The use of space-based imagery for weather forecasting, resource mapping of forests, analysing agricultural yields, groundwater and watersheds, gradually expanded to cover fisheries and urban management. Following the Indian Remote Sensing programme, this plan grew with the Oceansat and Cartosat series.

The field of satellite-aided navigation emerged later. It began with GAGAN, a joint project between ISRO and the Airports Authority of India, to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS) coverage of the region, to improve air traffic management over the Indian airspace. This has now been expanded to Navigation with Indian Constellation (Nav-IC).

In parallel came the development of satellite launch capabilities. Beginning with SLV-1 in the 1980s, it took a decade before ISRO developed the PSLV series that has become its workhorse with over 50 successful launches.

Space potential

The origins of the Second Space Age can be traced to the Internet. In India, the process began accelerating as 1990s saw the emergence of private TV channels, together with cable TV followed by direct-to-home transmissions. The demanded for satellite transponders and ground-based services exploded. Today, more than half the transponders beaming into Indian homes are on foreign satellites.

The last fifteen years witnessed another transformation and this time India was in lock-step with the developed world. The age of mobile telephony, followed by smart phones has shown the world what a data-hungry and data-rich society India is. Broadband, OTT and now 5G promise a double-digit annual growth in demand for satellite-based services.

In 2020, the global space economy was estimated at $450 billion, growing to $600 billion by 2025. The Indian space economy, estimated at $9.6 billion in 2020, is expected to be $13 billion by 2025. However, the potential is much greater with an enabling policy and regulatory environment. The Indian space industry could easily exceed $60 billion by 2030, directly creating more than two lakh jobs.

The reason is that in terms of the end-user revenue, only one-fifth is generated by the government. Media and entertainment account for 26% of India’s space economy with consumer and retail services accounting for another 21%. In terms of space activities, downstream activities like satellite services and associated ground segment are dominant accounting for over 70% of India’s space economy with upstream activities of satellite manufacturing and launch services contributing the smaller share. A similar trend can be seen in developed countries. The reason is that India has been an early adopter of digital app-based services.

The growing role of the private sector is also evident in the numbers and ownership of satellites. According to the UN Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), there are 8261 satellites in orbit, of which nearly 5000 are active. Till 2010, about 60 to 100 satellites were launched annually. The pace picked up in recent years. In 2020, 1283 satellites were launched into space. Today, Starlink operates a constellation of 3500 satellites and has a million paying customers. Both Starlink and One Web (in which Airtel has a stake) project constellations of 40000 satellites each. And Jeff Bezos of Amazon has launched Project Kuiper to bring low-latency broadband connectivity around the globe. How this domain will be regulated is a separate challenge but this provides a glimpse of the scope of expansion.

Creating an enabling environment

The Indian private sector is responding to the demands of the Second Space Age. From less than a dozen space start-ups five years ago, today there are a over a hundred. The pace of investment is growing. From $3 million in 2018, it doubled in 2019 and crossed $65 million in 2021. The sector is poised for take-off; as a transformative growth multiplier like the IT industry did for the national economy in the 1990s.

Today, ISRO manages four to five launches annually. It manages 53 operational satellites – 21 for communication, 21 for earth observation, 8 for navigation and the remaining are scientific experimental satellites (China operates 541). In addition, ISRO has missions like Chandrayaan, Mangalyaan and Gaganyaan (manned space mission).

ISRO has always been an open organisation that has worked closely with the Indian private sector. However, for some private sector companies, space technology related work is a small part of their revenue stream. They were content as vendors, producing to defined specs and designs.

The start-ups are different. Their revenue stream depends on space related activities and they need a different relationship with ISRO and government. ISRO today is the operator, user, service provider, licensor, rule maker and now also an incubator. It has steered India through the First Space Age and now it needs to do what it can do best within its resources and its high-quality manpower – research.

To be fair, the government has been mulling over this. In 2017, the government introduced the first draft Space Activities Bill in Parliament but it lapsed in 2019. There has been talk of commercialising the PSLV and SSLV launch services and New Space India Ltd (NSIL) was set up to replace Antrix. The Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre (IN-SPACe) was set up in 2020 as a single-window-clearance for the private sector. However, it is unclear as to whether it will emerge as the licensing authority or a regulator. An Indian Space Association (ISpA) was created as an industry association.

In recent years, a series of policy papers have been circulated for discussion – a satcom/telecom policy, an earth observation policy and an foreign direct investment policy. These have served a purpose. What is needed now is legislation (a Space Activities Act). This provides the legal grounding that policy papers lack; helps set up a regulatory authority and create an enabling environment for raising venture capital funding into the Indian space start-up industry. The window of opportunity for India to join the Second Space Age exists; it should not be lost.

*****

A soldier, diplomat, politician, mentor

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Published in The Hindu on 29th of September, 2020

I first met Jaswant Singh in the days following India’s nuclear tests on 11 and 13 May 1998. As the MEA official dealing with nuclear issues, I was to draft PM Vajpayee’s address to parliament due to open on 27 May while handling the flood of communications with our Embassies and outreach with Delhi-based Embassies and media.

Every few days, Vajpayee would convene a meeting to take stock of the international fallout and Jaswant Singh, then Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, was a permanent invitee. As the draft speech and the nuclear policy paper went back and forth, Vajpayee’s trust and regard for him soon became evident. Jaswant Singh had spent under a decade in the army but clearly had studied and thought deeply about India’s security dilemmas and challenges. He also had a vision of 21 st -century India that Vajpayee shared. Hardly surprising, then, that the following month, he was entrusted with the responsibility of opening dialogue with the USA, a daunting task because the Clinton administration had come down heavily on India, taking the lead in the UN Security Council in drafting a highly critical resolution and imposing sanctions.

Bill Clinton had originally planned a visit to India in early 1998, postponed to late 1998 because of the elections that brought the Vajpayee government to power. The nuclear tests left the US administration stunned and embarrassed. Jaswant Singh was visiting New York for a UN meeting in early June; a message was conveyed to the White House that he would be available to come to
Washington for talks. While he was not Foreign Minister, he held cabinet rank as Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was travelling, so it was appropriate that Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott (who would be acting Secretary) could engage the visitor.

And thus began the dialogue between India and the USA, an engagement that is best described as the most intense, the most inconclusive and yet, the most productive. After 16 meetings between June ’98 and September 2000 in seven cities, the tide turned with the highly successful Clinton visit in March 2000 and Vajpayee’s return visit in September when Clinton hosted his largest state dinner at the White House. From “estranged democracies”, India and the US became “natural partners for the 21st century”. I was privileged to be a part of the team and consider it a masterclass in diplomatic negotiations.

The US position was guided by progress on five benchmarks for India that were also part of the UN Security Council resolution – sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty that had been concluded in 1996; join the Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty negotiations being pushed in Geneva; accept a freeze on developing nuclear arsenal; tighten export controls on sensitive materials and technologies; and engage in dialogue to reduce tensions with Pakistan.

Jaswant Singh took Vajpayee’s speech and the nuclear policy paper tabled in parliament as his reference frame. He elaborated on India’s security concerns, elements of credible minimum deterrence as evidence of India’s restraint, adoption of a no-first-use use policy to ensure stability, voluntary declaration of a moratorium on further nuclear testing and India’s continuing commitment to responsible non-proliferation despite not being party to the NPT.

While both agreed that neither was looking for short cuts, Strobe emphasised compliance with the benchmarks while Jaswant focussed on securing better appreciation of India’s security compulsions that would compel any democratic government to do what India had.

Ramrod straight, beetle-browed, wearing his trademark army-style khaki bush shirt, Jaswant Singh’s most distinctive feature was his resonant baritone that he used equally skilfully, to make a short, decisive point and close a discussion or to spin long, complex sentences to stymie an inquisitive journalist or leave his interlocutor pondering.

Another hallmark was his recourse to homespun aphorisms. In the early days of his dialogue with Strobe, Jaswant cited an old saying, “There is merit in asking for directions only if we know the village we are going to”. As Strobe later acknowledged, “Jaswant’s strategy was more directional than destinational” and laid the grounds for the lifting of sanctions, introducing the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership leading to the 2008 civilian nuclear deal.

On another occasion in Manila in July 1998, we had our first meeting since the tests with the Chinese on the margins of the ASEAN Regional Forum. The meeting began frostily, with Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan blaming India for itsprovocative actions. He added, “There is an old Chinese saying – he who ties a knot must untie the knot”. Jaswant arched his eyebrows and said, “In my
village in Rajasthan, we too have a saying – it takes two hands to untie a knot”.

The meeting with Tang, scheduled to last for 20 minutes lasted an hour. Before the end of the year, I was in Beijing to lay the ground for a new security dialogue between the two countries.

Rest in peace, valiant soldier, for you did your country proud.