This book examines the Indian nuclear policy, doctrine, strategy and posture, clarifying the elastic concept of credible minimum deterrence at the center of the country's approach to nuclear security. This concept, Karnad demonstrates, permits the Indian nuclear forces to be beefed up, size and quality-wise, and to acquire strategic reach and clout, even as the qualifier minimum suggests an overarching concern for moderation and economical use of resources, and strengthens India's claims to be a responsible nuclear weapon state. Based on interviews with Indian political leaders, nuclear scientists, and military and civilian nuclear policy planners, it provides unique insights into the workings of India's nuclear decision-making and deterrence system. Moreover, by juxtaposing the Indian nuclear policy and thinking against the theories of nuclear war and strategic deterrence, nuclear escalation, and nuclear coercion, offers a strong theoretical grounding for the Indian approach to nuclear war and peace, nuclear deterrence and escalation, nonproliferation and disarmament, and to limited war in a nuclearized environment. It refutes the alarmist notions about a nuclear flashpoint in South Asia, etc. which derive from stereotyped analysis of India-Pakistan wars, and examines India's likely conflict scenarios involving China and, minorly, Pakistan.

An attempt to go into both the policy and programme aspects of Indias nuclear development and factors influencing them. Examines of the various national choices of nuclear policies involving consideration of diverse and often mutually conflicting objectives. It also analyses the growth and development of institutional infrastructure for the development of nuclear energy in India and also deals in some details nuclear technology development for peaceful purposes and economics of nuclear technology for power production in the context of energy crisis. Finally it analyses the responses of the successive Indian governments to various international pressures on nuclear issues. An attempt is made to perceive the potentialities of the nuclear policy with regard to economic growth and its implications for the international security system.

This book explores how anti-nuclear social movements impact the state’s civil nuclear policy and its implementation by presenting a historical-comparative case study of anti-nuclear movements in India. Drawing on social movement theory and empirical methods, the book demonstrates that the ability for anti-nuclear movements to impede the inception of nuclear plants – a key element of India’s civil nuclear policy – is determined by the movement’s collective action repertoires, the politicisation of nuclear power and the state’s larger developmental paradigm, and the openness of state input structures. The case studies of anti-nuclear movements in Haripur, Kudankulam and Kovvada demonstrate how the implementation of civil nuclear policy is also determined by the state’s technical and financial capacity and effective international collaboration. With a focus on theorisation of social movements and their impact, combined with empirical studies of anti-nuclear movements, as well as the historical trajectory of civil nuclear development, the book adds a new prism to the study of India’s civil nuclear policy and anti-nuclear opposition. It will be of interest to researchers working on social movements, state-society relations, energy studies and civil nuclear energy in the context of South Asia and the Global South.

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: South Asia, grade: 80%= good, University of Kerala (Department of Political Science), course: India's Foreign Policy, language: English, abstract: This essay presents an outline of the evolution of India's Nuclear Policy with a special reference to the India- US Nuclear Deal. However, more recent developments such as the passing of the Deal, withdrawal of Left support and the vote of confidence in the Lok Sabha are not included. On April 8th 2008 The Hindu published an article titled "Potential consequences of a regional nuclear conflict" in which the author convincingly illustrates the dangers a nuclear- armed South Asia presents.1 The fact that both India and Pakistan, but of course also China, possess nuclear weapons has been an alarming reality since 1998. The relative progress that has been achieved in India- Pakistan relations should not lead one to forget that two conflicts in 1999 and 2001 could easily have escalated into a nuclear confrontation. India had embarked upon a civilian nuclear program right after her independence but the "weapon option" has always been present. India's nuclear policy has been an evolutionary, sometimes painful process equally shaped by domestic and international factors. This paper attempts to analyse some of these factors and argues that the development of nuclear weapons was a logical, albeit not planned, consequence of them. It is interesting that even those in India fiercely opposed to nuclear weapons subconsciously seemed to have realised that India's nuclear program could not be limited to civilian application forever. A constant in India's nuclear policy is the strong wish to become and remain as independent as possible. For this independent nuclear policy India had to pay a high price. Isolated from international nuclear cooperation, confronted with sharp criticism and even sanctions, India had to rely on herself. While India's success has

Making the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party’s nuclear tests in 1998 its starting point, this book examines how opinion amongst India’s ‘attentive’ public shifted from supporting nuclear abstinence to accepting — and even feeling a need for — a more assertive policy, by examining the complexities of the debate in India on nuclear policy in the 1990s. The study seeks to account for the shift in opinion by looking at the parallel processes of how nuclear policy became an important part of the public discourse in India, and what it came to symbolise for the country’s intelligentsia during this decade. It argues that the pressure on New Delhi in the early 1990s to fall in line with the non-proliferation regime, magnified by India’s declining global influence at the time, caused the issue to cease being one of defence, making it a focus of nationalist pride instead. The country’s nuclear programme thus emerged as a test of its ability to withstand external compulsions, guaranteeing not so much the sanctity of its borders as a certain political idea of it — that of a modern, scientific and, most importantly, ‘sovereign’ state able to defend its policies and set its goals.

India's nuclear profile, doctrine, and practices have evolved rapidly since the country’s nuclear breakout in 1998. However, the outside world's understanding of India's doctrinal debates, forward-looking strategy, and technical developments are still two decades behind the present. India and Nuclear Asia will fill that gap in our knowledge by focusing on the post-1998 evolution of Indian nuclear thought, its arsenal, the triangular rivalry with Pakistan and China, and New Delhi's nonproliferation policy approaches. Yogesh Joshi and Frank O'Donnell show how India's nuclear trajectory has evolved in response to domestic, regional, and global drivers. The authors argue that emerging trends in all three states are elevating risks of regional inadvertent and accidental escalation. These include the forthcoming launch of naval nuclear forces within an environment of contested maritime boundaries; the growing employment of dual-use delivery vehicles; and the emerging preferences of all three states to employ missiles early in a conflict. These dangers are amplified by the near-absence of substantive nuclear dialogue between these states, and the growing ambiguity of regional strategic intentions. Based on primary-source research and interviews, this book will be important reading for scholars and students of nuclear deterrence and India's international relations, as well as for military, defense contractor, and policy audiences both within and outside South Asia.

Publisher Fact Sheet The definitive history of India's long flirtation with nuclear capability, culminating in the nuclear tests that surprised the world in May 1998.

This book examines India’s nuclear program, and it shows how secrecy inhibits learning in states and corrodes the capacity of decision-makers to generate optimal policy choices. Focusing on clandestine Indian nuclear proliferation during 1980–2010, the book argues that efficient decision-making is dependent on strongly established knowledge actors, high information turnover and the capacity of leaders to effectively monitor their agents. When secrecy concerns prevent states from institutionalizing these processes, leaders tend to rely more on heuristics and less on rational thought processes in choices involving matters of great political uncertainty and technical complexity. Conversely, decision-making improves as secrecy declines and policy choices become subject to higher levels of scrutiny and contestation. The arguments in this book draw on compelling evidence gathered from interviews conducted by the author, with interviewees including individuals who were involved in nuclear planning in India from 1980 to 2010, such as former cabinet and defence secretaries, the principal secretary to the prime minister, national security advisors, secretaries to the department of atomic energy, military chiefs of staff and their principal staff officers, and commanders of India’s strategic (nuclear) forces. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, Asian politics, strategic studies and International Relations.

An analysis of the current (February 2009) status and future potential of India's nuclear fuel cycle is presented in this book. Such a fuel cycle assessment is important, but relatively opaque because India regards various aspects of its nuclear fuel cycle as strategically sensitive. Any study therefore necessarily depends upon reverse calculations based on the information that is available, expert assessments, engineering judgment and anecdotal information. In this work every effort is made to provide transparency to these foundations, so that changes can be made in light of alternative expectations or subsequent information. This book should be of interest to policy experts, governmental specialists, technologists, nuclear technologists, and others seeking to understand and explain the associated facts and potential consequences of the recent U.S.-India civil nuclear accord. Table of Contents: Introduction / A Brief History of the Indian Nuclear Program / Indian Nuclear Facilities / Fuel Cycle Analysis: From Beginning to Present Day / Fuel Cycle Analysis: Future Projections / Alternate Reactor Systems / Conclusions / Acknowledgements