Indeed, it didn't even protest against Chinese nuclear tests until the mid-1990s. India's knowledge of Pakistan's nuclear pursuits, for over a decade before Pokharan-II happened, didn't warrant extreme measures either. But Nuclear India, supposedly far more secure, now proceeds to build underground nuclear-command shelters costing Rs. 1,100 crores-more than the Centre is spending to fight the drought! Does this speak of security or rationality? According to classical deterrence theory, nuclear weapons-states (NWSs) do not go to war with one another. Less than a year after Pokharan-II-Chagai, India and Pakistan did just that. One more year on, they appear close to yet another confrontation.
Lest it be thought that Kargil was only an "aberration," as high deterrence theory once termed the Sino-Soviet Ussuri river conflict, we are being treated to a new strategic doctrine: routine, normal, "limited wars" between NWSs! This comes not from some charlatan in the "strategic community," but from India's defence minister, who declares that we can win such conventional wars with ease-despite New Delhi's loss of overwhelming strategic superiority over Islamabad. Cold logic or nuclear bravado? Nuclearisation, many believed, would induce much-needed sobriety, stability and maturity into India-Pakistan relations.
But our government taunted, chided, and cajoled Islamabad into testing by linking nuclearisation with Kashmir. Today, instead of sobriety, we have unprecedented exchanges of vitriolic, hostile, rhetoric, heightening of tensions, and mutual demonisation. The number of Indians who believe that Pakistan's destruction is a precondition for peace in this region (and vice versa), has never been greater. One of the subcontinent's two rivals is convulsed by a coup. In the other, there is an explosion of tub-thumping chauvinism, book-burning bigotry and majoritarian prejudice. Conducive to strategic "balance" between states which can rain mega-death, but won't talk to each other? The Pokharan-Chagai balance-sheet should impel serious introspection.
Pakistan is gravely crisis-ridden. Nuclearisation has strengthened fundamentalist forces there. Chagai accelerated Pakistan's economic downslide through "austerity" measures and impounding of foreign-currency deposits. India and Pakistan together have lost to sanctions $3 billion in aid and concessional loans-equivalent to their annual foreign direct investment inflows. India's assets side too looks ungainly-despite the Clinton lovefest, lifting of sanctions, and vague talk of a Security Council seat. New Delhi is plain lucky that the long-overdue "correction" of South Asia's relations with the world, especially America, a decade after the Cold War's end, should have coincided with Mr Clinton's discovery of India, American NRIs' successes, the IT boom, and with Pakistan's marginalisation.
A gap has opened between US softness on India's nuclear posture and Security Council Resolution 1172. But it is delusory to imagine that India has gained stature as a "nation on the march" with a booming economy, or as a responsible, mature, state with a relaxed nationalism, at peace with itself and its neighbours. India has wantonly antagonised its biggest neighbour. As for India's upbeat commercial image, one IT swallow does not an economic summer make! Nor does a Kargil decisively alter regional strategic equations. Pessimistically, Indian is still one of the sick men of the world; optimistically, a country with much potential (couldn't that have been said pre-Pokharan, or 50 years ago?)-although it shines beside Pakistan. The liabilities side looks grim.
Both countries have hardened their nuclear postures-especially India with its Draft Nuclear Doctrine, ambitions for a triadic, open-ended arsenal, and cynicism towards nuclear restraint, leave alone disarmament. A special synergy now operates between nuclearism, a growing "national security" obsession, jingoism over Kashmir, and rank communalism: Two-Nation Theory prejudices are under revival, complete with condemnation of "Hindu cowardice" and Pakistan's "design" to "disintegrate" India. Never since Partition have militarist hawks and communalists worked in such perfect unison inside and across borders.
These are the heaviest political costs nuclearisation has claimed anywhere. Once "national security" mindsets and "military necessity" doctrines prevail, values of transparency, inclusion, pluralism, participation and human rights are jettisoned. Nuclearisation's economic costs could prove ruinous. Even a small arsenal, one-fifth the size of China's, could over some years cost Rs. 50,000 crores, which exceeds India's entire annual expenditure on primary education. Should India go in for a bigger arsenal, its cost could exceed a frightening three to five percent of GDP, especially if there is an arms race. India will race not just against Pakistan-utterly devastating it-but with China, perhaps devastating itself economically. Nuclear weapons manufacture imposes high ecological costs too.
Cleaning up the environmental mess left behind by the US weapons programme is officially estimated to cost $250 billion-the same order of magnitude as India's GDP. There are harmful radiation and waste releases at each stage of the nuclear "fuel cycle" from uranium mining onwards, including handling, transportation and storage of nuclear materials. The social costs of nuclearisation dwarf all others. Embracing the "abhorrent" doctrine of nuclear deterrence means seeking security through insecurity, terror, and threat to cause havoc on a mass scale, with pitiless disregard for life. This is incompatible with civilised, humane, values.
Nuclearisation spells matsyanyaya-big fish swallowing small ones, as the "natural" order of things, extendable to society itself. Nuclearism entails getting our children to accept a deeply immoral state of society as normal. It means rationalising and routinising mass terror and a grotesque version of "Might is Right". From here, a "realistic" embrace of barbaric "reasons-of-state" irrationality and fundamentalism is one small step. Putting the veneer of "responsible" behaviour and "rational" conduct by "us", and the opposite by "them," won't help. We have seen restraint and sobriety take far too many knocks. Ultimately, we must ask if we want to leave this irrational, violent, legacy to future generations.
If the answer is no, we must change course-to preserve sanity and gain security. Real security can come only through democracy and pluralism, equity and social cohesion, caring and sharing, compassion and justice. Food security, minimum entitlements, gender security, human capacity-building and empowerment, are more important here than military security. India can still claim greatness if it struggles for comprehensive security. It has a historic opportunity: unilaterally freeze nuclear and missile programmes for a limited period, so that the NWSs make deep arms reductions and move towards abolition. Morally and politically, this will be electrifying. That's when the world will take real notice of India.