Why is the US suddenly trying to be so nice to India? What is the basis for USA’s new found love for India?
Background tale of NPT
India has not signed the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) which recognizes only those countries that have conducted nuclear test before 1967 as nuclear powers! Every sovereign nation has the right to acquire nuclear weapons and the attempt to eliminate all nuclear weapons out of the world should be a global effort, where as an agreement like NPT only creates an elite nuclear club of few nations that have done tests before 1967! NPT is like saying only 5-6 countries can have nuclear weapons and all other countries should not have them. Utter nonsense and childish. India has rightly maintained that it will not sign NPT. As usual Pakistan has said that it will not sign NPT till India signs it!! There is no other logical basis for Pakistani stand. Like India, even Israel has rejected NPT on similar grounds.
Read my earlier article on Indo-US nuclear deal.
Hyde Act
The Uranium resources available in India are not adequate to power our nuclear plants. Since India is not a signatory to NPT, the NSG i.e Nuclear Suppliers Group (a group of nations with natural Uranium resources) will not supply Uranium to India.
So US has gone out of its way and created an act called Hyde Act, to allow US to supply Uranium fuel to even those countries which are not signatories to NPT! All this just to enable US to supply nuclear fuel to India. Hyde Act provides a legal basis to the 123 agreement between India and US. Why is US doing all this?
The Reason
The reason US gives is that it will help solve India’s rising energy needs! From when did US start having such a great concern for India and its needs?
It was the same US which refused to abide by its contractual obligations of supplying nuclear fuel to India in 1974 after India conducted its first nuclear test. US was then supplying fuel to India’s Tarapur nuclear power plant TAPS, and after the Indian tests it simply refused to supply!! And do we have to trust US again? What is the guarantee that US won’t repeat this in the future? And this time there are also legal provisions in the Hyde Act for US to do so!
US itself generates only about 16% of its power requirements using nuclear fuel. Why? If nuclear power is so viable then why not take it to 40-50%? Depending on nuclear reactors is not a joke. A small accident can leave the entire region uninhabitable to years to come. What about terrorist attacks on nuclear plants?
It was the same US which under Richard Nixon sent arms supplies to Pakistan in 1971 via Iran in direct violation of the US laws that had imposed sanctions on Pakistan then. US sent its aircraft carrier USS enterprise to scare India during the Indo-Pak war of 1971, and when India did not care about any possible US intervention, Nixon called the Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi a witch! The then US national security adviser, Henry Kissinger went even further and called Indira Gandhi a bitch and said the Indians are bastards anyway! See related info about these derogatory comments used by the top US administration against India and Indians here .
Who knows, there might be similar comments used even by the current US administration about India (especially about the left parties of India which are against the deal, or even about BJP/NDA for conducting the 1998 nuclear tests), which might get revealed 2-3 decades later!
It was the same US which encouraged China to sell arms to Pakistan! Note that during the cold war Pakistan was an US ally, and the US could not bear the closeness of Indian ties with USSR. And today the same US is saying that Pakistan cannot be considered for a similar nuclear deal like the one with India? Why? Pakistan on the other hand is justified (from its point of view) in feeling betrayed by the US, in spite of them supporting US in the war on terror and during the cold war. It was for the same Pakistan which was an US ally once, that US officials told after 9/11 attacks that be prepared to be bombed back to stone age!
But again, it was the same US which turned a blind eye towards Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions. And now its making all the hue and cry about the Pakistani run nuclear black market!
In other words, all I am trying to say is that there is no true concern about India in this US-Indo nuclear deal. Its again all about US interests. This is bloody international politics, no place for words like emotions, love, respect here. Its all about safeguarding one’s national interests. So India should not be carried away. US is just redefining the playground of international politics.
US is aware that India is becoming a major world power, a stable democracy of over 1 billion people cannot be ignored, and more than anything else it is the foreign policy and economics that matters.
US wants to contain China which it perceives to be a threat to US interests in the future. So US wants to use democratic India as a base against the communist China, the same way it once used Pakistan against India! It is no surprise that immediately after the 123 agreement was announced, Japanese premier Shinzo Abe visited India, stressing the need for a broader alliance of the democracies of Asia (so obviously excluding China)! US wants a US-Indo-Japanese-Austrialian nexus in the region to contain China.
Next US wants India to play second fiddle to its foreign policies like that on Iran. US is at unease with Indian relations with Iran, and wants to use deals like these to dictate Indian foreign policy in tune with its own.
And finally the economic boom of India. Who doesn’t wants money. The Indo US nuclear deal will allow legal framework for contract worth over 150 billion US dollars to american companies! Look at the amount of money India will be spending on American companies. Can’t we save this huge amount of money? A lot of money India is earning due to its economic boom is going back to these countries in this way! Just yesterday India has invited RFP for a global defence tender worth over 42000 crore rupees!!
Every time India buys a commercial aircraft from Boeing or Airbus, every time India buys fighter aircrafts like F-16s, Sukhois, etc spending billions of dollars on them, I would be wondering can’t we build these things on our own and save the huge money and use it for other developmental activities within the country? These spendings are like, not cooking food at home, and instead going to hotel everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner, both waste of money and spoiled health :)
The Nuclear Way
I strongly believe that nuclear energy based on fission elements should NOT be a major source of power generation for the world in the future, because of the resulting radioactive pollution and waste problem. We should concentrate on renewable energy resources like solar, water, wind, lava/magma, etc. Instead of depending on one single source as an answer to all our energy requirements, we should follow a distributed and localized approach, like the example mentioned here .
But more importantly nuclear fusion based technology when invented could provide a better answer to world power shortage. Fusion does not leave long term radioactive waste unlike nuclear fission. India is already a member of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) project to build an experimental reactor based on nuclear fusion, along with the EU, US, Japan, Russia, China and South Korea. Look at the roles of each country in this project here .
Having said this, India has world’s second largest reserves of Thorium and efforts are on to develop Thorium based fast breeder reactors in India. India would not have required the nuclear deal if we had enough Uranium available. Now that we have Thorium, why not concentrate on it instead and develop Thorium based reactors?
Indian Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR) went critical (i.e started power generation) in 1995. FBTR uses indigenously developed plutonium-uranium mixed carbide fuel. All that is left is to succeed in, using depleted Thorium (available abundantly in India) to create Uranium-233, i.e India can still produce Uranium using its available Thorium resources, even if Uranium is not available naturally in India in large amounts! Once we are able to convert our Thorium into Uranium, why do we need this nuclear deal at all? Remember that from an Indian point of view, nuclear deal is all about getting Uranium to be used as fuel to power its nuclear plants.
If people are thinking that the Indo-US nuclear deal is going to solve all our power problems, let there be no illusion about it. Even if we implement the Indo-US nuclear deal today, by 2020 we will be at the most generating 20000 Mega Watt of power using nuclear power, where as the power requirement of India by then would be about 2,50,000 Mega Watt. What a massive compromise for less than 10% of our power needs!! India will become just another country playing second fiddle to the US if we go ahead with this deal. And US foreign policy will dictate what Indian foreign policy would be.
So all I am saying is, lets be practical. There is no rediscovered great friendship and love of US to India here. US is just continuing to play and redefine the game and re-identify its partners and adversaries based on its national interests. India should also look only at its national interests.
Remember that, when US refused to sell Supercomputers to India in the 1980s, Rajiv Gandhi setup C-DAC to build our own indigenous super computers. The result is that today India with its PARAM series of super computers developed by C-DAC, is among the only three countries in the world which have developed their own teraflop super computers (The other two are US and Japan, the Indian version being lot more cheaper in terms of manufacturing cost than those of US and Japan). So India has the proven track records not just in software, but also in hardware. Moser baer is another Indian success story in the hardware field.
If we are to become a future super power, we should remove all kind of dependencies which would come on the way of our independent foreign policies, we should become technologically self sufficient, concentrate on emerging as a third alternative to US and China instead of playing second fiddle to US. That’s the way ahead for a super power India. When I say super power India, I dont mean a super power like USA, I mean much more and much beyond than that! A world leader which treats all other countries on par with it, a world leader which other countries look at not out of fear, but with a feeling of trust.
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this article has been very knowledgable 2 read. i loved the way u hav explained the terms & technicalities about the indo-us nuclear deal. thanks again for such a wonderful article.
Hi Gurudev
iam really agaist this deal,as this will open the gates for US
and its hidden ambitions into india.
i donot understand what happened to our PM he was puppet for 4 years and now he is adament on nuclear deal.
It is estimated that we will spend 50,000 crore in buying nuclear fuel just guess if we can make wing mill out of this money at our coastal areas.
http://forums.ipodhacks.com/showthread.php?p=77584
Thanks hitesh for the comments :) Yes some of the facts about the deal are really concerning ones!
This is indeed a concerning article and an interesting one too
Hitesh
http://hiteshramchandani.blogspot.com
Thanks for the link Sainath. Interesting read.
Hi all please go through the below interview of Prof. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, if you have not read already….absolutely gr8 man……
espically his view on, capital punishment, indo-us-nuclear deal……
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/214046-9.html
Thanks for reading…..
Che
I simply liked the way you compared new and old countries.
Personally I dont prefer nuclear fuel to be used as an energy source. I think a real advanced technology can be completely in sync with nature. As you rightly said, there is no real energy shortage on this planet, it is only the means to harness the available energy that is missing.
We have to concentrate on developing technology to harness existing energy, rather than try to develop new energy sources :)
I always feel that there is no lack of opportunity anywhere in the world, theres only lack of creativity :)
As an example of innovative thinking, in northern Himalayan region of India, one can see this wonderful development in the past few years, where people who once didnt even have electric bulb at home, have theatres in their villages today and also plenty of home grown electricity without any dependency on government or its help. Without any pollution, from nature, with almost zero maintenance, all with the use of simple technology. See http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/little-drops-of-water/
Nuclear fuel on the other hand leaves a lot of radioactive waste and provides a large scope for misuse too. Reactors are dangerous. Its like having a nuclear bomb which hopefully explodes slowly forever!
Gurudev, everything you say makes sense. I know too little about nuclear fusion, fission, reactors, etc. But I have a chord sounding, all the same.
In the manner of left-handed humor, I will divulge world-wide, best-kept secret everyone in the US knows about the US administration in the standard Q & A:
Q. How can you tell if a politician is lying?
A. His lips are moving.
Nixon was a first-class prat. Now, he’s the internationally recognized icon for Failure. Too few after him, if any, have made up for his inexcusable wretchedness. [Here, there is always someone who says, “”He ain’t my president,”” no matter what administration is in place. America is, unfortunately, a republic, though most would like to think it a democracy. It was separated from British rule using chess-moves (truly) and all manner of “”dirty pool;”” no surprise when the game continues, even 250-odd years later. But like all arrogant champions, there will always come along that one-move-ahead better player.]
The US is too young to be “”super-powering.”” Give a toddler a book of matches and he’ll likely burn down the house. The US is the country who is in need of check. Insolent, the current government of the country in which I was born — behaving like a two-year-old who tries to boss mom and dad around, or manipulate adults to get its way. Even worse, if mom and dad allow the two-year-old boss them. Who is surprised when a two-year-old behaves like a two-year-old? India is one of the oldest, if not THE oldest, surviving nations in the world, is it not? Infantile administrations need proper parenting.
Enough risky exercising of my “”free speech.”” I can’t stomach much discourse on nuclear energy, per se…there’s a huge ball of hydrogen gas powering the planet perfectly well without any help from us, US, or humans in general. Effectively and efficiently harness that Sun, and one could rule as god….but bantering about thoughts on manipulating atoms is so much more fun, yes?
Do go on, my dears. Do go on.
Vinayak
Thanks for your comments. Below is my take on this.
There are three views here
1) India cannot do anything without US help
2) India cannot do some things without US help
3) India can do anything and everything without US help
If we stick to the first view then what you said makes perfect sense.
Even if we stick to the second view, your points still hold good.
Practically thinking I would say that second view is correct.
But whats more important is to note that the view (2) was more closer to view (1) a decade back and also before that, due to lack of funds and due to the brain drain from India to US.
After the economic boom that started in the late 90s in India, today India is more closer to view (3), even though still there is a long way to go.
But the point is that India is moving towards view (3) instead of towards view (1).
The LCA/missiles etc are the programs that were initiated in India when the brain drain was at its peak. And logically as a consequence it got delayed and some of the research was also scrapped. Those were the times when IITians were flying off to US the moment they got their degree certificates.
Today most of them prefer to stay back, there is a reverse brain drain. And look at the pace of development in just few years!!
We already have Brahmos cruise missile developed (along with Russia) and ready for exports also! No other country including US has a supersonic cruise missile yet! So I see that the bottle is half full. This is just an example :)
See http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/09/01/brahmos-the-deadly-cruise-missile/
Hypersonic version of Brahmos is under progress. Now India and Russia are also developing fifth generation combat aircraft jointly. This will not only prevent reinvention of the wheel, but also give us indigenous technology. Note that both Russia and India are equal partners both in terms of investment and technology, its not that russians are giving parts and we are assembling it! Today India has become an exporter of arms too.
We also have developed our own satellite launching vehicles even for Geo-Stationary orbits. We have a moon plan in place and have the means to achieve it.
Please see http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/moon-moon-india-coming-soon/
Moreover, Russia has been a reliable friend of India than US. It was the US which suddenly stopped providing nuclear fuel to our Tarapur plant in 1974 by going back on its word and agreement, not the Russians! It was the US which initially funded the pakistan against India. It was the US which sent its warship towards India during the 1974 war. I am not saying that we have to be prisoners of the past. All I am saying is to have the lessons from the past. It was the russians who had a defence pact with India against any external aggression, at a time when India was not even 5% of what it is today!
You said “”russia sold us only when a draft agreement for 123 was signed””. Nope. Russia has been supplying fuel to India inspite of US protests. In fact our Tarapur plant still continues to run only because of Russian supplies. See the news which is more than a year back http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/8251.asp
Even in 2000 Russia agreed to supply fuel to India inspite of US protests.
Another nuclear plant built in Tamilnadu with the help of Russia is almost operational now and Russia has agreed to supply fuel to this plant starting from this year, till the entire lifetime of the plant, and without any conditions! Indo-Russian relations are purely based on trust and friedship. See http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070122/59495736.html
This plant alone produces 2000 Megawatt of power, already 10% of what Indo-US nuclear deal will produce in 2020!
India can have the same deal with Russia instead of US! Russians never put any conditions to India like the US is doing when we had deals with Russia.
It is not only a question of worrying about US stopping fuel supply, its more about giving access to our reactors to IAEA. Giving access to american military presence in India. And more than that its about US dictating Indian foreign policy. If you have observed it, India voted against Iran in UN not because India wanted to do so, but because US wanted India to do so! And all this even before the deal is finalized!
Military cooperation with US simply means more terrorist targets towards India! India will have to send troops to messy places like Iraq. Why should we? Entire world knows that the reason for Iraq was oil and not any WMD.
Let us not be a part of US military game plan or next century strategies of US. There is simply no need to do so. India is not Afghanistan or Iraq, nor is it Britain or Taiwan. Our economy is the world’s fourth largest today and even at present growth rate we will be second largest by 2040 or so.
What is the consumer market size of US? India is a market of one billion people. The number of people living below poverty is drastically coming down, I have experienced it myself! Six years back I didnt have a single paisa when I finished my graduation, today I have enough money to satisfy all my needs!
It is the US jobs that are moving to India, not the other way round. It is the Indian brains that are staying back in India, not the other way round. During 70s we might have taken decades together to build a missile. But now, the first successful version of Brahmos was completed within 5-6 years of starting it!!
We have developed our own cryogenic system when US refused to give us the technology.
We developed our own supercomputers when US refused to give us the technology.
Now why should we commit the blunder of playing second fiddle to US, when we are in the best possible position in our independent history and on the right path towards development and power?
If we really want to buy fuel from US, we will pay money and let them supply the fuel for that money, full stop. No silly conditions like: give us access to your reactors, dont conduct nuclear test, dont talk to Iran, sign NPT fron backdoor etc. We are not slaves.
Indian companies today are buying more US companies, than US buying Indian companies today. See http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/09/07/slowly-but-steadily-india-is-on-the-rise/
It is the US which is in bad need for this deal, which is why when Bush visited India he told Rice ‘I want this deal at any cost’.
THe nuclear deal might give us at the most 20000 Megawatt by 2020. Well, just a simple technique like improving on waterwheels in the Himalayan region are all set to provide over 2500 mega watts to India in just next 5-6 years. See http://hitxp.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/little-drops-of-water/
All this without pollution, no complicated maintenance and no waste management.
Let there be no doubt about it. India, Japan and China is what the world will be in the future, international politics will not be dominated by US or UK or any western country. It will be east and the asian countries India, China and Japan that will define the new world order.
Indian companies dont even need outside market, over 540 million Indians today are below the age of 25! This number is more than the entire population of US and Russia put together!
Growing economy and stronger Rupee is hurting the Indian exports and so more and more products are being sold within India rather than being exported. Unlike China which is a export based economy India is a consumer based economy there by making us independent of external dependency in the years to come. Note that the US grew to its current status only because of a massive consumer based economy which in turn fuelled more research and quality and this is where even India is headed towards today.
What will be the cost of the electric power in India if we generate it using nuclear fuel from US? Why should we pay so much more? Why should we spend US$ 15-20 billion on these US companies to buy all components? Spend the same amount on R&D, renewable fuel, biogas, solar, thorium, etc.
If anybody thinks that the US economy is strong, it will be the biggest joke. Pentagon is supporting US economy. As of today US external debt is a whopping 10.04 trillion dollars! Most of the american dollars are locked today in the banks of China and India.
Read ‘Why the emperor has no clothes’ http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/FRA501A.html
Let us not get into the hype. US is definitely a strong country today, but definitely not the ONLY strong country. Let us not artificially pull US into the asian century.
Coming back to asia, India can very well defend itself. A country of 1 billion people, especially 550 million confident youth, or if you consider people upto age 35 to be young then its over 700 million, and its not a joke. China wont commit suicide.
In a world of 6 billion, 700 million youth can turn the tables within a matter of no time :) This is 2007 not 1962. Any trouble for India will simply mean trouble for the world including US. Even if there is no nuclear deal with US and in case of a worst scenario where there is a Chinese attack on India, US will rush to support India for the simple fact that its economy will be under trouble otherwise, and also because it doesnt want China to become even more stronger by defeating India :)
Instead of going to US for a nuclear deal, lets go to our friend Iran and get into a natural gas deal. That will generate more power power for us, than the nuclear fuel, and of course without any conditions and at a lower cost too.
India is already close to the international community. We dont need a nuclear deal for that. First we need to get out of this mindset that a bunch of western countries are the international community. Today when US says international community, it actually means US,UK and a bunch of other few countries who play second fiddle to US. Going forward, India, Japan and China will be the international community.
Ok having said all this, let me clarify – I am not anti-US, but I am pro-India :)
I love the american people, I like their great democracy. The american scientists are my favourites. Even America has great intellectuals. American people are friendly, nice people.
But American administration looks at every other country like a pawn in the game of chess. Well, they do it in the interests of their country, so lets play our part of the game well. As somebody said once, Its bloody international politics ;)
We dont want to forever be customers of second hand out dated F-16s paying millions of dollars, we will build things on our own. See http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/06-18-04.asp
What I said, does it make any sense? :)
I have two arguments and I hope i get your response.
By the way I regularly read your blog and it does make many good points.
1) You must be aware of the LCA program
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Tejas
We started in 1983 what progress have we made? Are we short of intellectual capital? We have been over the budget many many times and have never delivered, but give time and money we will succeed, but time is of essence here, see US had many iterations of its own fighter jets and then they got it right so did russians, we dont have time and dont need to reinvent the wheel, China’s rise was not without US help, remember ping pong diplomacy and the preferred nation status that it enjoyed? Also it initiated the process of economic reforms much before Narsimha rao did for india. The truth is we cannot be where we want to be when we want to be without US help.
We also have to note that we didnt have fuel for our nuclear reactors recently and russia sold us only when a draft agreement for 123 was signed. There is no kidding that we will get any international help in nucs without US.
I feel similarly about our thorium reactor, we can do it but I would rather take the deal now develop india solve more pressing issues like poverty and continue developing our own technology and then phase out 123 deal.
2) If only 10% energy by 2020 is going to be generated by the deal then well why do we even worry about US pulling out of it?? it wont cripple india?? US even though uses only 16% of its power generated form nuclear plants the key is not percentage teh key is the amount generated. US generated 3.5Petta watts (1Petta watt = 1,000,000,000,000,000 watts) so it is not that Us does not use nuclear power, even though the percentage is less the amount generated is huge. Look at france how much energy does it generate form nuclear fuel? a staggering 78.1%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_generation
So we wont be heavily dependent on the deal and it wont be able to force our foreign policy not with this kind of percentage.
I think the nuclear deal a part of broader “”Focus India”” policy of the US administration. And the reason for this I agree is not love it is just business, China is and will casue more trouble in the pacific ( like digging oil of the coast of japan, taiwan) and it will trouble us with our border issues. Remember the terrorism in Northeast is funded by our eastern friend. This deal has to BIG loop holes which have been purposefully added, 1) We dont surrender all our reactors and 2) we can reprocess the fuel.
Both these will help india build more nucs, remember now we have about 5%-10% of what china has, nobody is ever gona use them but tehy help in balancing teh power so when india china negotioate they are at par. We cannot be bullied if we dont have military strength we will be bullied, US can do what it does because it has the military strength.
Signing the deal brings us closer to the international community and it will help quciken teh pace of development and we need US to contain China and our western neighbor
Vinayak
Sainath
Thanks for that link. Kalam’s views again proves that our thoughts are correct and most politicians are wrong in supporting the deal :)
You should have seen the other day a random questionnaire conducted by CNN-IBN to our MPs about what they think about nuclear deal and is it good or bad! My God, most of these people dont even know what the deal actually is all about, and they are going to debate on it! Some even said that they have ‘heard’ that it is not good for India!!
At least cant they read about what they are going to approve or disapprove?
anonymous
Yes, the main problem in India is we dont have experts in the political system. Manmohan singh was a very good finance minister in the PVN government. But he definitely is not being a good prime minister, he is not even done 10% of what NDA had done under Vajpayee government.
Whatever the state of BJP and NDA today, the earlier NDA government had done greatly appreciable work both inside and outside the country. The only blunder I can remember were Kandhahar and Kargil. A bit of more freedom to our armed forces and a bit of alertness would have ensure early victory with minimal casualties. Kandhahar hijack was a mess created mainly by Brijesh Mishra and others.
Coming back to Manmohan singh, he needs to first understand what ‘energy independence’ means for a country. It is as simple as that. India is not Singapore or Japan to say that we dont have any alternate natural resources available. Our PM needs to think like a statesman, not with a vision of solving our problems by depending on USA, but by converting our problems into opportunities
http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/feb/06prez.htm
Use Thorium reserves for N-power: Kalam
http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=91574
PM aslo in support of nuclear deal….
anonymous
I have given an example of supercomputers on this subject.
Look at the link, its like America saying if you agree to buy nuclear fuel from us, and agree to all our conditions of separating your nuclear reactors, providing us access to inspect your reactors, etc then we will give you access to our technology.
Why? dont we have brains to develop these technologies on our own? All these years prior to globalisation when India didnt have these technologies America did not help us, they even imposed sanctions.. Now post globalization US knows very well that its just a matter of time before the Indian youth develop all these technologies on their own. There is no brain drain from India to USA like earlier today. And so Americans today are offering(?) these technologies also.
If they really want to provide us the technology, why link it with the nuclear deal at all? Because nuclear deal means money for American industries. 150 billion dollars is not a joke. India has developed its own satellites and put them in space, has developed its missiles indigenously, has a strong presence in software, has developed its own supercomputers, has the world’s second largest optical disk manufacturer, conducted nuclear tests, etc.
And all this, at a time when there was huge brain drain. Do we need technological assistance today? The kind of technology which Ratan tata is talking about, Russians have been providing such technologies to India without any conditions ever since the days of Indira Gandhi. See http://www.brahmos.com/home.html , read about cryogenic engines etc. In fact it was the US that had warned Russia against providing cryogenic technology to India.
All it offers is 10% of power generation by 2020 at a cost of 150 billion dollars. Has anybody calculated what our electricity bill be at this cost of power generation. Why do you think China is opening up a new coal mine every week for its power generation instead of going for nuclear power? :)
The nuclear deal is more of an American necessity than an Indian one.
Why did Bush tell Rice on his visit to India that he wanted the deal at any cost? Great love for India? :)
Karan Thapar: And if at the same time the nuclear deal were to unravel, what impact would that have both on FDI inflows into the country and the perception of India as a destination of investment?
Ratan Tata: The civil nuclear deal with the United States is in many ways the best possible thing that has happened to India in a long while. Apart from the fact that it enables India to go ahead on a much larger scale in the much needed area of power ? of nuclear power which is clean power ? it also takes away many of the dual use sanctions which have hurt India?s technological access. Over time this will give India a tremendously powerful position in the knowledge industry, in R&D, in high technology. I believe the benefits the nuclear deal will bring to the country will be enormous and I?m very very sorry that on various issues this is being beleaguered.
Karan Thapar: So if it doesn?t materialise this is a serious loss and set back for India?
Ratan Tata: I believe it?s a serious setback to India. I believe the only people happy to see this not happening are probably Pakistan and China.
comments pls gurudev ??
gurudev
simply amazing the way you have put forth the point…
I think the blog should go somehow to the parliament or prime-minister table…even if it goes to APJ kalam and we receive any comments from such an authority it would be great…
Can anyone show the blog it’s needed path to goverenment of india or APJ kalam ??????
Simon being an US citizen what you feel, are you in support to india that they should not sign the nuclear deal to US ?…I was unable to understand it from your above comments..
Thanks for the post Gurudev !!
That was really great info Simon on fusion based reactors. Thanks for that. Your site has really great informative material.
Well, nobody invited Americans to Afghanistan, Vietnam, Iraq, etc :)
As far as peace keeping activities are concerned, India is more active in UN already on that. Unlike US, India does not act unilaterally, it acts along with other nations in UN, which is what I meant when I said that “”India should become a world leader which other countries look at with a feeling of trust and not out of fear””
As of March 2007, India was the third largest contributor to the UN peace keeping force in terms of troop numbers (9,471), while US is 31st with only 393 troops. In fact the top three contributors are India, Pakistan and Bangladesh with almost 30000 troops! :)
The head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Under-Secretary-General Jean-Marie Guéhenno, has said ?the provision of well-equipped, well-trained and disciplined military and police personnel to UN peacekeeping operations is a collective responsibility of Member States. Countries from the South should not and must not be expected to shoulder this burden alone?.
As far as India becoming superpower is concerned, I believe in having indigenous technological edge as the key than anything else.
Yes Simon,
I know that as far as the common American citizen is concerned there are lots and lots of them who like India and the Indians. I have a great respect and love for the American scientific community too.
But the American administration is a completely different game altogether. As for India, it was the Russians who helped India during the times of real crisis. The Indo-Russian ties continue even today without any Hyde Act or 123 agreement for technology transfer. Brahmos is the latest example. See http://www.brahmos.com/home.html
We will definitely not allow China to eclipse us, nor do we want America to dictate our foreign policies :)
BTW you are mistaken about American love for India. There is a lot. India should appeal to it.
The deal is. India has to get its government out of the way of economic growth. You must not let China eclipse you. Bad for the world.
Here is a different kind of nuclear reactor:
Bussard Fusion Reactor
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion
It has been funded:
Bussard Reactor Funded?
I have inside info that is very reliable and multiply confirmed that validates the above story. I am not at liberty to say more. Expect a public announcement from the Navy in the coming weeks.
The above reactor can burn Deuterium which is very abundant and produces lots of neutrons or it can burn a mixture of Hydrogen and Boron 11 which does not
The implication of it is that we will know in 6 to 9 months if the small reactors of that design are feasible.
If they are we could have fusion plants generating electricity in 10 years or less depending on how much we want to spend to compress the time frame.
India needs to get in on this.
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BTW for India to be a Super Power it will have to earn the trust of the world. When countries ask for peace keepers the first ones they ask for are American. Ivory Coast is a case in point.
When India is the first choice or an equal choice it will be a super power.