Editorial: India’s Nuke Hunt

Ever since former DRDO scientist K Santhanam made the hard-hitting revelation that India’s fusion test conducted during Pokhran II was a fizzle, there has been extensive debate on the issue, both at home and abroad, despite all later refuting of the remarks by other responsible scientists including Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. The international media, in particular US and Pakistani, has interpreted it as India’s astute attempt to find ground for going for a last nuclear test for correcting wrinkles of the fusion bomb before Obama administration closes doors of Indian nuclear programme by asking it to sign NPT.

However, Union Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna has almost refused to ink CTBT in its current form in United Nation General Assembly and his deputy Shashi Tharoor said the same about discriminatory NPT.

If these conjectures are wrong, government should step into the debate and put an end to it and also clarify to the nation what its policy is on country’s nuclear programme. The suspicion gets further strength from the argument that the wrinkles of fusion test could be corrected in laboratory itself without requiring a test which introduces us to another possibility.

A section of intellectuals at home suspected US pressure on India for scrapping its nuclear arsenals once Indo-US nuke deal was signed. They way K Santhanam made a revelation, almost a decade later, and then it was negated by his fellow scientists and then Santhanam reaffirmed his claim indicates that the whole debate on the issue is politically backed. After all, why a scientist should divulge something so sensitive years later and why technocrats should be concerned about political matters?

The whole thing suggests that India is really thinking about conducting a fusion test shortly and in case it receives sanctions following the successful test, it might even go in for signing NPT or CTBT. So this protest to existing discriminatory clauses of the two treaties. Besides, there is issue of Pakistan’s probable reaction to any such test, which reacted vehemently even to India’s first nuclear submarine.

If these conjectures are wrong, government should step into the debate and put an end to it and also clarify to the nation what its policy is on country’s nuclear programme. The suspicion gets further strength from the argument that the wrinkles of fusion test could be corrected in laboratory itself without requiring a test which introduces us to another possibility – that of inking any of non-proliferation treaties without even conducting a test.