Now that the initial hurdle of the Indo-US nuclear deal is crossed with the likelihood of it getting approval from both the nuclear supplier group (NSG) and the US Congress, there’s been the predictable last minute desperate attempt to scuttle the deal. This, in the form scares mongering, by a section, so completely enveloped by the negative mindset.

The article, ‘123: Rethink before we go forward’, in ‘The Hindu’, dated 07.08.2007, fits with above line of thinking. The lack of balance, could be attributed and overlooked to the possibility of an amateur’s work, but the abnormal stance of disapproving all the successes of the Indian side and painting the bleakest of scenario around the deal has been downright depressing.

Most of the questions raised have been straight out of the deleted bin, old and tired; sorted out long back; about the guarantee in the supple of technology, nuclear and a sort of unfettered freedom to pursue all aspects of our developmental and weapons activities.

A kind of blinkered nationalistic posture may justify the pride of having achieved the distinction of staying out of the Non proliferation treaty (NPT), even treating it as discriminatory, what with the entire world on the other side; barring just a few along with India gaining the undistinguished  label of international pariah. And, now when the country is being assisted out of a murky situation towards a much more honorable position, by the US administration, we find the ‘crabs pulling down the fellow ones’, prevailing, in the domestic arena.

The very logic placed in the article of the gains of the deals being neutralized by the dependence factor is flawed. In this interconnected world, one has to have a certain level of trust and dependence to move forward than stay put out of the paranoia of some vague futuristic assumptions. Especially when all the hype of the country’s technological progress has been highly exaggerated; the occasional satellite launch missile tests are no great shakes if seen in the global contest.

In fact the indigenous route suggested brings into questions of the kind of progress these scientific bodies and the community has achieved over the years? Has all the R&D’s success been even remotely proportionate to the nature of facilities made available to the scientists against the deal?

The apprehensions being created in the minds of the people of the unsure nature of the availability of nuclear fuel and technology, even before the beginning of the deal, is less amateurish than a crude and radical manner to dirty the waters. Why, should ‘Tarapore’, be given such disproportionate prominence in a much changed and changing world?