Daily Times

In December 2015, the Centre for Public Integrity (CPI) published several reports by Adrian Levy in which he highlighted for the international community the ambitions of a nuclear state — India — that can send the South Asian region back to the Stone Age. However, the so-called nuclear global guardians and western mainstream media channels did not take it seriously; perhaps they think that India as an ally will help contain China’s emerging status as the regional power. India’s developing world’s fastest growing Hydrogen Bomb Arsenal.

Levy explains in his report how Indian government is destroying the environment and health of its own people by draining highly radioactive wastes into rivers. India has already seen the Bhopal disaster because of which hundreds are affected even now, and Indian nuclear programme has been termed as faulty in adopting the IAEA safeguards. Thus providing any further nuclear supplies to India probably can be a subject of nuclear disaster, and the liability will also affect the credibility of nuclear suppliers.

Similarly, another concern Levy raised was the high risk of theft attached with growing Indian nuclear arsenal. It is feared that indigenous separatist, terrorist and extremist organisations that are strongly grounded and not only in major cities can get their hands on nuclear materials.

The most important concern here is that this material can be used to make a nuclear bomb, which could terrorise the region. Recently, the Belfer Centre at the Harvard Kennedy School has published a report on India’s weaknesses in safeguarding its nuclear programme. The authors of the report, Kalman A Robertson and John Carlson, at Project on Managing the Atom, also suggested that international community should look into this serious matter before it is too late.

The report says: “It is often assumed that the Plan clearly and verifiably separates India’s nuclear facilities into two categories, civilian and military. The reality is that the Plan has produced three streams: ‘civilian safeguarded’, ‘civilian unsafeguarded’, and ‘military’. The relationships and overlap between the three streams are not transparent. Some civilian facilities, even when operating under certain provisions of India’s safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), may contribute to India’s stockpile of unsafeguarded weapons-usable nuclear material.”

The authors are of the view that Pakistan concerns over the expansion of Indian nuclear weapons programme are justified. “Pakistan has reasons to be concerned that India could use its unsafeguarded PHWRs to produce more nuclear weapons in the future. Indeed, many of India’s PHWRs have reportedly been used as sources of weapons-grade plutonium for its military programme, both through recovery from low burn-up first irradiated fuel discharges and through at least one dedicated campaign in the late 1990s.”

While declaring India’s nuclear programme unsafe the report says, “India also has five plus or minus three tons of unsafeguarded separated plutonium (and considerably more unsafeguarded spent fuel) from power reactors, which is available to its nuclear weapons programme and could hypothetically be used to significantly increase the size of India’s nuclear arsenal.”

Additionally the report stated, “India has military nuclear facilities, which are primarily designed to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons and naval propulsion. India is currently expanding its fissile material production capability.”

The authors recommended that India should apply safeguards as reasonable assurances to all states especially Pakistan before mainstreaming into Nuclear Supplier Group. The report adds “Safeguards should be used to provide a meaningful assurance to all states, including Pakistan, that elements of India’s civilian nuclear build-up, particularly those that are being supported by international nuclear suppliers, are not contributing fissile material to India’s growing nuclear arsenal.” Concluding the report says, “India’s civilian nuclear power programme is undergoing a significant expansion, thanks in part to a series of nuclear cooperation agreements concluded with other states over the last eight years.”

Epistemology of both these reports again generate the same old probability of nuclear arms race and nuclear war in South Asia initiated by India, however, this time with the acceptance of Pakistani reservations. The US Congress nowadays is moving towards a strong relationship with India in all aspects to contain China, unconcerned what the unbalanced strategic paradigm can do to the region.

The writer is a freelance columnist