MUMBAI: Top Indian scientists have highlighted four points to express their anxiety about the Indo-US nuclear: one, that India’s nuclear weapons programme shouldn’t come under any international scrutiny; two, facilities developed indigenously should not come under safeguards; three, indigenous R&D should remain autonomous; and four, Parliament should uphold national interest in this regard. They feel on all four counts there was danger of crippling compromise.
While the development will certainly curtail the government’s wiggle-room on the deal, official sources claimed that it was precisely because of these “legitimate concerns” that the government took care to craft a deal that protected all of them. “And whenever there were deviations, the government had taken them up with the US at the highest level,” the sources said. In fact, the scientists seem to have appreciated this. In their statement, they noted that the PM “has already taken up with President Bush the issue of the new clauses recommended by the US House of Representatives.”
To that extent, the tone of the statement can’t be said to be totally in opposition to the deal. Rather, the aim seems to ensure that the country’s political and economic sovereignty are not compromised in any way by the deal. Their appeal to the MPs seem to be driven by the same urge. The statement says: “It is important for our parliament to ensure that decisions taken today do not inhibit our future ability to develop and pursue nuclear technologies for the benefit of the nation.
“We therefore request you, the parliamentarians, to discuss this deal and arrive at an unanimous decision, recognising the fundamental facts of India’s indigenous nuclear science and technology achievements to date, the efforts made to overcome the unfair restrictions placed on us and the imaginative policies and planning enunciated and followed in the years after independence.”
Asked why it took nearly a year for the scientists to come together on this deal, P.K. Iyengar told TOI: “From the various testimonies being presented about this agreement in Washington, we feel that India’s atomic autonomy is now under a serious threat.”—By arrangement with The Times of India
