INDIA exploded an atomic device, somewhat smaller than the one dropped on Hiroshima, beneath the sands of the north-western Rajasthan desert in May 18. That made it the sixth member of the Nuclear Club after the U.S., U.S.S.R., U.K., France and China.
And the consequences–New Delhi insisted that the blast in May I8th was for peaceful purposes only. But India’s uneasy Asian neighbors and many western nations were less convinced. At a meeting at Geneva of 25 nations Nuclear Disarmamcnt Conference, U.S.A., Sweden and Canada noted regretfully that the test had set back efforts to prevent the spread of atomic weapons. Other nations rejected India’s explanation. No distinction could be drawn between tests for peaceful purposes and that for arms development. Diplomats feared that the test would make other nations get technical know-how and accelerate their efforts to join the Nuclear Club. Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto warned that if India built the bomb, they would have no other alternative than to follow their example.
One troubling question was whether India which plans to spend some 316 million over the next five years, has confused its priorities. For a nation where 25% of the s8o million inhabitants are below the annual $ 3o per capita poverty line, such an investment seemed dubious at best. The world bank is reported to have said that India will need some 12 billion dollars in aid for the next half decade. Yet several of India’s staunchest aid donors, U.S.A, Canada, and Japan voiced dismay at New Delhi’s intention to continue with its nuclear development program. A proposed 75-million-dollar U.S. aid program to India may now be in jeopardy. Canada too angrily suspended its long period assistance to India’s atomic energy program and other aid programs promised to New Delhi.
India’s new nuclear role will probably establish the country as an increasingly potent political force on the Asian subcontinent and among the third world nations, Indian defense minister Jag Jivan Ram (now food and agriculture minister) in response to Western criticism said that the test opens the way for such peace-time industrial uses of atomic energy, mining and prospecting for vitally needed oil and gas reserves. With two nuclear power plants and two more under construction potentially capable of providing enough plutonium to produce more than a score of modest bombs, India 1s on the threshold of becoming an atomic power. But a nuclear bang, albeit peaceful, means nothing without a corresponding release of economic and political energy.