HVK Archives: Between hy_now and hy not now
Between hy_now and hy not now - The Financial Express
R Jagannathan
()
May 26, 1998
Title: Between hy now and hy not now
Author: R Jagannathan
Publication: The Financial Express
Date: May 26, 1998
Having failed to break the nation's will, the anti-nuke lobby is
now changing its tune
Post-Pokharan, the critics of India's nuclear policy have been
pushed into a corner. A few fellow pink dailies, after completely
misjudging the public mood, first tried to pretend that going
nuclear was akin to economic harakiri. The sanctions have come-
as predicted-and the sky hasn't fallen on our heads. Sure, there
will be a price to pay if the sanctions continue indefinitely,
but it should be obvious to any scaremonger that the Indian
economy isn going to fold up like a banana republic. Having
failed to break the nation's will, sanctions or no sanctions. the
anti-nuke lobby is now changing its tune-and real fast. Some
argue that while we need to have more bombs and long-range
missiles to carry them, we shouldn't have tested in defiance of
world opinion. Others are grudgingly beginning to accept that
there was a power asymmetry in south Asia that, perhaps, needed
to be addressed. But, they ask without thinking, why test now?
What has changed in the last few weeks that India had to conduct
nuclear tests and court world condemnation? This is actually a
meaningless question. If you accept the logic of the need to
address the asymmetry, does it matter whether we test now or two
years later? The question, of course, is being asked because it
is widely felt that the blasts were timed to give the BJP
government a political boost when its public image was sagging.
That may well be true. But this, at best, is an argument to ask
the BJP not to politicise the nuclear issue-which is a valid
argument. But it is no reason to question the need for the tests
themselves. And it is not as if earlier governments didn't
consider going down Pokharan Road. It is now widely accepted that
in 1995 the Narasimha Rao government was planning to test: the
options were presented to the Gowda and Gujral governments
themselves, but for various reasons the political judgment then
was to avoid the tests. The BJP government-which had been very
clear on the nuclear issue even before coining to power, did what
it promised to do as soon as it came to power. So what is the
relevance of the question hy now? The real question should,
therefore, having been: why not now?
This is where we seem to have some real arguments coming from
critics of the bomb. One oft-repeated barb is the development
question: why do we want to join the rive-nation nuclear club
when we show no willingness to leave the bottom 10 club in the
poverty league? Why build a bomb when you can't feed the poor?
The astonishing fact is even right-wing dailies are falling for
these pseudo-arguments. You can get kudos for this kind of
rhetoric from leftist groups, but the nuclear issue has nothing
to do with either removing poverty or being a peacenik. For
example, one could well ask: why have Coca-Cola when you can't
provide drinking water to your villages? Why have Kentucky Fried
Chicken for the rich when the poor have no food security? The
right-wingers know the right answer: not having Coke is not going
to bring water to the villages. So not having a strong defence-
including a nuclear defence-is not going to give the poor bread.
On the other hand, a sound defence policy based on nuclear
deterrence will ultimately help the government concentrate single-
mindedly on the cause of removing poverty. A poor defence weakens
a government's ability to handle international political
blackmail, or, for that matter, Pakistan's proxy war in Kashmir.
Everybody agrees that the Kashmir issue can only be solved by
talks. But can a weak government (Indian or Pakistani) do any
deal that is fair to both sides and which will stand the test of
time? If the answer is no, we are back to a situation where the
Kashmir stalemate continues, and the economy continues to bleed
>from the proxy war. So, clearly, it is not a bombs-or-bread
question. What India needs is a bombs-and-bread policy that, over
time, reduces tensions with neighbours and brings genuine
security to the people of south Asia. Peace flows from the
ability to defend yourself, not by denying the need for a
credible-defence. Jaw-jaw can continue only when war-war is
unthinkable.
Other critics say that the real costs of going nuclear are still
unclear because of the need to spend more on missiles, bomb
delivery systems, tactical nuclear devices and other related
defence measures. This argument needs to be assessed carefully
before committing the country fully to a nuclear-based defence
(as opposed to mere nuclear deterrence), but it is extremely
doubtful whether an increase in defence expenditure to, say, 4
per cent of GDP from three to 3.5 per cent is entirely
unsustainable. Our poverty problems have less to do with the
money spent on defence and more with our ability to rind a
consensus on how the economy needs to grow-through market
capitalism; through socialism; or a healthy mix of the two.
Between 1947 and 1991, we took the wrong road to development. The
economy neither grew fast nor did our policies help reduce
poverty. Since 1991, we have managed to find a higher growth
trajectory, but we have not addressed the basic equity issue of
putting in place social safety nets for the poor in a globalising
economy. How fast can we globalise without destroying the fragile
consensus on reforms Whether we have bombs or not, this is a
question that will not go away. And the answers to this question
are as widely varied today as they were a decade ago. The left,
for example, is still committed to dirigisme, the public sector,
progressive taxation and direct state intervention to eliminate
poverty. The right thinks we must globalise fully and go whole
hog for growth-never mind what happens to Indian industry and
jobs in the short run. The middle path suggests that we must
globalise, without losing sight of the needs of the poor. and
without destroying Indian business' confidence in itself. That's
where the blasts come in once again: by giving the country a
better sense of security and self-esteem. Pokharan-II ensures
that Indian will liberalise with self-confidence.
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