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Broken image: Shakti 2 in India's Thar desert, one of the four nuclear test sites. Credit: AP

Exercising the nuclear option seems to be one of the few election promises that India's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has so far fulfilled (see Nature 392, 320; 1998). While prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee claims they were carried out in the interest of national security, the tests last week on Buddha's birthday in the land of Mahatma Gandhi have blasted a large hole in India's image as a spiritual, non-violent country.

“India has shot itself in the head,” says Proful Bidwai, an anti-nuclear activist. While BJP celebrated the nuclear test with fire crackers, some 500 intellectuals and others belonging to nongovernmental organizations held a protest march in the capital with slogans: “We want water, bread; not bombs.”

Prominent critics of the test included Kuldip Nayar, the former high commissioner to the United Kingdom. India's Economic Times newspaper said in an editorial: “For a country with a third of its population below the poverty line, spending its scarce resources on a nuclear arsenal could be damaging,” adding that after the test, “India's strategic position has not improved and may have deteriorated”.

Approval from K. Santhanam, R. Chidambaram and Abdul Kalam of the atomic energy establishment. Credit: AP/Adjit Kumar

Although critics call the tests a political diversion, a polling of 1,007 adults in six cities showed that 91 per cent approved of the tests. Reaction in the scientific community at large has also been supportive of BJP's action.

When the science minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, broke the news at a conference of directors of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research — India's largest scientific agency — all 40 assembled directors hugged each other and applauded. The head of the council, Ragunath Mashelkar, declared that he was “extremely proud as an Indian”.

The former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Raja Ramanna, is reported to have opened a bottle of champagne to celebrate, while Udippi Rama Rao, former chairman of the space commission (now chairman of the UN Committee on Outer Space) and Govindarajan Padmana-bhan, director of the Indian Institute of Science, both said that India should have carried out the tests a long time ago.

Krishnagopala Iyengar, another ex-chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, congratulated Vajpayee “for having erased doubts over the competence of Indian scientists”. He called for research on fourth-generation bombs “based on nuclear isomers and super-heavy elements”.

“We don't have even a minority of scientists who think about ethics because most scientists are government servants,” complains Bidwai.

Surprisingly, M. G. K. Menon, former president of the International Council of Scientific Unions, who joined the BJP on the eve of the elections (see Nature 391, 626; 1998), seems to have played no role in the nuclear testing.

And, although scientists have been praising the testing in their individual capacities, no professional science body has officially endorsed the nuclear adventure. “This is a political and defence matter on which our academy cannot take any stand,” says Srinivasan Varadarajan, president of the Indian National Science Academy in New Delhi.

Varadarajan also doubts that the latest scientific feat is likely to create a climate for more funding for scientific research in general. “More money will certainly start flowing to defence and atomic research, but these are areas that are already getting the biggest share of our budget.”

Sanctions by the United States and other countries would admittedly hurt several health and development projects. The effects of the tests on India's science establishments have yet to be gauged, but no one seems particularly worried. “Sanctions are welcome,” says Mashelkar, pointing out that India “seems to excel precisely in those areas in which technology is denied”.

The Indian Space Research Organization, which has learnt to live with a variety of sanctions in the past, says “sanctions will pinch, but not hurt”. But some defence projects, such as the light combat aircraft which critically depends on a flight control system from Lockheed Martin of the United States, may be in jeopardy.

Work on the main battle tank, which uses German engines, and the advanced light helicopter, which requires components from the United States, may also be affected. But Kalam says denials will help spur self-reliance. “No one can throttle us.”

Gyanendra Nath, however, an adviser in the international division of the Ministry of Science and Technology, says that repercussions in many collaborative projects “are going to be serious”. He says cancellation of DM300 million (US$168.3 million) in grants to India will jeopardize a two-year Indo-German programme on nanotechnology.

Germany has also been funding research in superconductivity at the National Physical Laboratory in New Delhi and is a major donor ($20 million) to the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras. With Japan cutting off its aid, the Indo-Japanese project at the SPring-8 synchrotron may close down, says Nath.

Since the winding up of the India-US fund in January this year, there has been no major US-funded project in India, and officials say the United States cannot afford to take actions that will hurt collaborative projects in weather or vaccine research “since they [the United States] will be the losers.”