new delhi

Murli Manohar Joshi, a physicist, has been appointed cabinet minister for education and science and technology in India's new coalition government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Joshi, 64, believes in modernizing India through indigenous rather than imported technologies, and has also demanded that India should develop nuclear weapons.

The BJP won the largest number of parliamentary seats in the recent elections. The party is not known as a supporter of large-scale or expensive scientific projects, but this is the first time that the science portfolio has been given to a minister of cabinet rank; in the past it was handled by a junior minister.

It is also the first time that education and science portfolios have been allocated to the same minister. Assisted by a minister of state, Joshi — former professor of physics at Allahabad University and a past president of BJP — will look after all scientific departments apart from space and atomic energy. These, as in the past, will remain the direct responsibility of the prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Vajpayee's national agenda says that his government “will re-evaluate the nuclear policy and exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons”. Whether this means India will start building nuclear weapons is unclear.

But Rajagopala Chidambaram, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and a key figure behind India's first nuclear test in 1974, has said that the country “has the technical capability” to do so. A former chairman of the AEC, Raja Ramanna, was also quoted recently in the Times of India as saying that India should go nuclear.

Neighbouring Pakistan says the BJP's nuclear policy is extremely worrying. Tariq Altaf, a spokesman for Pakistan's foreign office, said last week that Pakistan would be reviewing its policy of “nuclear restraint”. He called on the international community to “take serious note of India's intentions”. Pakistan is widely believed to be able to make nuclear weapons. Both India and Pakistan have refused to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Strategic analysts fear new economic and foreign policy pressures for India. But Vajpayee says the new government will not go back on India's commitment to the World Trade Organization (WTO), including proposed changes to its patent law. Although contractual obligations would be met, he says, the government “would do some hard bargaining at WTO to ensure that national interests are better served”.