new delhi

India, which carried out nuclear tests and subsequently declared itself a nuclear weapons state last month, has increased the budget of its Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) by 30 per cent. The rise is the first major hike in the department's 50-year history.

But officials are still insisting that the enhanced funding, which takes the department's budget to US$652 million, is intended to lead to the generation of more electricity by nuclear power, rather than to building improved nuclear bombs.

Overall, the 1998-99 budget presented to the country's parliament last week allocates $2,443 million for non-capital spending on science and technology, 22 per cent more than last year. Expenditure on space will rise by 52 per cent, to $401 million (see table.

Table 1 Budget allocation 1998-99 (in millions of US dollars) for capital plus non-capital spending
Full size table

The allocation for defence research has gone up by 24 per cent, to $619 million. The move has inevitably raised speculation that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has decided to maintain the momentum of the nuclear blast by strengthening all the three strategic departments associated with nuclear weapons.

But Rajagopalan Chidambaram, DAE secretary and a key scientist in the nuclear testing, denies this. “The decision on budget allocation was taken well before the Pokhran tests,” he says. “The main increase is in the plan allocation for nuclear power.”

Chidambaram points out that, while DAE's research facilities receive only a 40 per cent boost in funding, the nuclear power schemes get an 86 per cent rise. “The government is very keen to encourage the power sector,” he says.

Krishnagopala Iyengar, the former head of DAE, describes the Indian weapons programme as a low-cost affair. He says work related to the nuclear bomb over many years did not even have a regular budget, and was a “part-time” job for DAE scientists. Plutonium was a by-product of the nuclear energy programme and, according to Iyengar, the five bombs tested by India cost just $1.25 million to fabricate.

DAE plans to use the enhanced funding for the development of intense particle beams for research, and for an advanced heavy-water reactor to burn thorium — abundant in India.

A spokesman for the BJP government said that much of the new space budget is intended to build the next-generation INSAT-3 telecommunication satellites, which will replace the INSAT-2E series.

Rocket development also gets a significant share, and officials say the objective is to develop the Geostationary Launch Vehicle for the INSAT-3 satellites. The budget provides $12.5 million for a new launch pad for the vehicle.

The research community in general has welcomed the extra funding for science. Spending on education has increased by 50 per cent to $1,762 million, and $6.25 million has been set aside for improving research infrastructure in universities. “This is the first time a new initiative has been taken to rebuild science and engineering departments in universities,” says Valangiman Ramamurthy, secretary in the science ministry.