The Atomic Energy Act came way back in 1962 .... Yet India did not know how to take advantage of Nuke power ::: Few questions, Fewer Observations

Two laws - The Atomic Energy Act (1962) and the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act (CLNDA) of 2010 must be debated. 

I am stating this from the view point of Nuke energy power. It could be 'strategic' but that does not mean it's about nuclear arsenal. 

(There are reports that US President John F Kennedy had offered to help India conduct a nuclear weapon test in 1963, but Nehru had turned him down.)

We may well say the 'early policy' moves in the late 1940s and 1950s laid the foundation for the development of nuclear energy in India. But it goes to our discredit that we messed up despite being early starters in Asia. 

Analysts say 'unfortunate developments both internal and external and also India's inherent historical political blunders or flip-flop have only created the current nuclear hurdles for New Delhi.

India’s ideological and policy confusions put it in the worst of all worlds — it was neither a “nuclear” fish nor a “non-nuclear” fowl. 

To speak the truth, India’s atomic problems began to multiply from 1970s. 

Prior to that India took the plunge. 

The private funding from the Tatas, at the request of Homi Bhabha, set the stage for nuclear research in the early 1940s even before the atomic age dawned formally with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

The policy of creating internal capacities through foreign collaboration gave India a head start in atomic energy development in the 1950s.  

"One part of the problem was the change in the global order on nuclear energy cooperation when the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty came into force in 1970," says an article in 'The Indian Express'.

But before going further, we have to appreciate that the Nuke power issue figured in Budget speech of the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Feb 1, 2025.

The NPT froze the number of nuclear-weapon states at five (those who had already tested atomic weapons before 1967) and began to impose restrictions on the transfer of nuclear technologies to the rest of the world. 

If India’s nuclear adventure flourished in the era of atomic internationalism, it began to wilt under external pressures from the 1970s. 

If India had done a nuclear test before January 1967, it would have been on the right side of the nuclear divide. 

But the inability or unwillingness to become a nuclear-weapon power put it on the wrong side. 

When India did conduct a nuclear test in 1974, it made matters worse for itself. 

Delhi’s too-clever-by-half claim that its nuclear test was for peaceful purposes did not impress its hostile neighbours — Pakistan and China. 

The fact of the matter is Beijing intensified its atomic collaboration with the former. 

The result: Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal built with Chinese cooperation. 

"The rest of the world tightened nuclear sanctions against India, which was seen as a major threat for nuclear proliferation," writes C Raja Mohan in the article. 

India finally conducted five nuclear tests in May 1998 and declared itself a nuclear-weapon power. Although they brought a new set of sanctions, the tests opened the door for a reconciliation with the US and the global nuclear order. 

Washington began to explore the prospects for nuclear accommodation with Delhi. During 2005-08, the George W Bush administration helped craft a framework in which India could keep its nuclear weapons and resume civilian nuclear cooperation, which it had been denied since 1970. 

The US had to do some heavy lifting to change the domestic non-proliferation law and international norms to facilitate India’s release from the nuclear jailhouse. But before India could celebrate, its political class, in a spectacular act of collective self-harm, shot itself in the foot by passing the CLNDA in 2010.