The Nuclear Suppliers Group has lifted its ban on nuclear trade with India.
Okay guys, I know this is a tough issue, because our entire future depends on it. Let me roughly re-state what I replied to Rajeev's post below:
Gentlemen, I understand your concerns, but let me mention a few things. Hyde Act means the US terminating nuclear cooperation with us, in the event that we do something objectionable to them. But that doesn't mean the rest of the world automatically terminates cooperation with us. This is because NSG WORKS ON CONSENSUS, AND HYDE ACT IS NOT PART OF NSG RULES. France, Russia, etc could still continue to deal with us, even if Hyde Act compels the US to stop cooperating with us. Hyde Act compels USA to ask NSG to stop cooperation with India, but HYDE ACT CANNOT COMPEL NSG MEMBERS TO FOLLOW/OBEY US DEMANDS. Asking for something and getting it are 2 different things. Just because Hyde Act requires US to tell NSG members to cease nuclear trade with India, it doesn't mean that all NSG members are required to do what the US says. Hyde Act is a US domestic law whose rules are separate from NSG rules, and trade with the wider world of NSG is what we really want, more than just trade with the US. Once we get through the NSG door, then afterwards France and Russia can keep trading with us, even if Hyde Act was triggered and the US also got all its closest buddies to cease nuclear commerce with us. Yeah, it's a small window which we have crawled through, but once we're on the other side, we're there. Pak cannot follow us, and is stuck on the other side.
Nextly, in the latest turn on this agreement, the Manmohan govt has stated its "commitment to a moratorium on nuclear testing," which worries me. It depends on how you interpret the word "moratorium". Some interpret this as a voluntary delay, others interpret it as a total ban. The language, as humiliating as it is, seems to allow us adequate wiggle room to go for future tests if our security situation becomes dire enough to demand it.
Now we can start our industrial revolution. I'm hoping that solar, wind and other renewables become popular with us, just as they have in China. But nuclear energy is considered to be the most promising technology to lift our dependency from fossil fuels and paying petro-jizya to the petro-Sheikhs. Industrial revolution means many more blue-collar jobs for the poor and the illiterate, for whom Call Centre or IT jobs are a pipe dream. We need to become a manufacturing superpower, like China. We need to employ our poor, and not taunt them with fantasies of IT/CallCentre jobs that are beyond their reach. Factory jobs will end the caste divide in India, as they will unleash the floodgates of productivity and enable upward mobility for the broader masses. The economic divide that forms the basis for caste-warfare will finally be addressed, and the Leftist/Commie politics will dissipate. Instead of idly boasting of a "large middle class" that actually forms only a small fraction of the population, we will now instead see the formation of a truly broad-based middle class that will be much larger, more proportionate, and representative, and which will give genuine political stability to the country. Now people will finally decide their votes on real issues, and not on who is offering them the biggest quota bribe.
With the nuclear hurdle out of the way, we can now also gain access to other advanced technologies, including dual-use ones, relevant to a wide variety of applications beyond the nuclear industry. We will have a chance to suck in all kinds of technology that will accelerate our economic growth and give fresh impetus to our stalling economic reforms. In the next few years we could zoom back over 10% growth, while addressing energy-driven inflation pressures so that we can avoid social rupture. Because as you know, the average ordinary Indian is not getting those double-digit annual wage increases that that IT people and the civil servants get -- they are instead getting a whole lot of pain, as their buying power erodes before their own shocked eyes. We have to convert ourselves to a supply-side economy, and to do that, we have to get more energy pronto.
17 comments:
san, the problem is that we just signed the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapons state. this is what the NSG waiver means -- india is a second-class power which is not allowed to test or have nuclear weapons. well, we could have done this twenty years ago and just signed the NPT then and accepted we were a second-rate country, which would forever be pushed around by the yanks and chinese and so forth. but we went through all these years of grief just so that we could have an independent nuclear deterrent. that is now gone.
and you're wrong if you think this is going to bring energy independence. here are some numbers on costs. we are far better off investing in solar.
Consider the capital costs of various types of energy: [Source: CSTEP]
• Natural Gas: $600/kW with 4-10cents/kWh in fuel costs
o Plus cost of pipelines and LNG terminals
• Wind: $1200/kW
o Plus cost of transmission lines from windy regions
• Hydro: n/a
• Biomass: n/a
• Coal: $1135/kW and 4c/kWh in fuel costs
o With CO2 cleanup: $2601/kW and 22c/kWh in fuel costs
o Plus cost of railroads and other infrastructure
• Solar Thermal: $4000/kW
• Solar Photovoltaic: $6000/kW
• Nuclear Fission: $3000/kW and 8c/kWh in fuel costs
o Plus cost of radioactive waste disposal
o [Source: World Nuclear Association, “The Economics of Nuclear Power”]
i have to disagree with you -- all those factory jobs are not the answer -- see the problems with singur and the nano. we have to do the more intelligent work, especially in agri-business, not in polluting heavy manufacturing.
" we have to do the more intelligent work, especially in agri-business, not in polluting heavy manufacturing ".
Absolutely.Good food (consisting of grains,cereals, herbs, fruits, vegetables and cattle rearing that is inextricably tied to it) automatically promotes good health.
Not processed heat & eat kind of denatured stuff.
Even the most smug saudi said:
" we can't drink oil, we need rice".
India ought to use its fertile lands particularly the delta regions for this purpose.Alas , but india excels in wanton self destruction.
rajeev, we have not signed the NPT. The purpose of the waiver is to allow an exception for nuclear trade with a non-NPT country (India).
NPT is quite clear in obliging any further signatories to accept full inspections, and we are neither signing NPT nor submitting to full inspections. Yes, as part of 123 Deal, we have now negotiated an agreement with IAEA to allow inspections of certain facilities, but other facilities are not part of this agreement and are therefore available for our full military use. There's no point in demanding all facilities be exempt from inspections, as we'll have more than enough bomb-making capacity from the ones that are exempted. There's no benefit to us in building up ridiculously high arsenals that can incinerate each square inch of enemy soil 1000 times over, like the US-vs-USSR did, only to destroy these weapons later on, after arms reduction talks.
Our independent nuclear deterrent is preserved. Foreign fuel will supply us with civilian power, while our domestic fuel is more than enough to supply us with nuclear weapons deterrence.
The fear was that Hyde Act could somehow compel an international cutoff of nuclear commerce with India, if we test. But Hyde only compels the US to ask the other NSG countries to cut off India -- Hyde cannot force the other countries to agree. We know that Russia and France would very likely not agree.
We have now achieved the status of being Nuclear Weapons State which has not signed the NPT, but which is still allowed the privilege of nuclear commerce with the rest of the NPT member nations. So we get to have most of our cake and eat it too. While Shourie and Chellaney have said this nuclear commerce will not include enrichment tech, that doesn't bother me, as even the Permanent-5 nuclear powers don't trade such prized tech amongst themselves. US, Russia and China don't trade enrichment tech with each other.
We have not signed away our legal right to test, but obviously we don't want to test for frivolous reasons, in order not to reduce the number of our supplier relationships. And yet if we have to test, we can do it and still get by with some narrow few country-to-country relationships which Hyde Act won't be able to cut off. I can live with the idea of not testing for frivolous reasons (ie. setting off some A-bombs right before an election, to boost the popularity)
Rajeev, I too would like to see wind and solar bloom, but these are not reliable sources of power, as sunshine and wind are not available 24/7. Only in certain places is wind high enough to be useful. No country can build up their energy infrastructure backbone upon wind and solar. We need to boost our productivity now, not 30 years from now. China's economy is 6 times ours, and even still their growth rates are higher than ours. We have to boost our infrastructure now, and energy is the fundamental enabler for all that. The battles between rich and poor in India are only going to get worse and worse, not better, if we don't act soon. Ordinary people cannot hold up under double-digit inflation, as it will threaten their survival. Overcoming the nuclear hurdle will now release a huge logjam in commerce, tech transfer and also FDI. Now India's growth story can eclipse China's, as we will now become the main event internationally.
Rajeev, agri-business is not value-added enough to give everyone employment. The only way that agri-business can become more competitive and more viable is if adopts the same efficiency techniques used in the West -- which means more automation, and less manual labour. The only reason that agri-business has seen a recent boost in the past few months as due to that aforementioned commodities inflation which is also causing severe pain to the common man, who cannot afford to buy as much food as before. India needs a full supply-side economy that will produce for its people all the items/tools they need and want. We cannot compete with the rest of the modern world using just the mortar and pestle. We need a Great Leap Forward.
The problems with Singur are an example of why we have to bring the Communist era to an end. As the rest of the country moves forward, the W.Bengals and Keralas will have to abandon communism or perish. A broader industrialization boom will help us to break the cycle of 2-steps-forward-1-step-back and slow incremental progress. This will decisively purge the communist forces from society, by giving everyone an opportunity in the free market.
The following by Priyadarshi Dutta is worth a read:
" In 1904, when JN Tata's men were 'prospecting' for iron ore deposits in Central Provinces (now Orissa), a metallurgy engineer, PN Bose, informed Jamshedji about possible iron ore and limestone deposits in the then princely state of Mayurbhanj. Thus, it was due to correct prospecting by a Bengali engineer, the TISCO was established in 1908 at Sakchi, which was renamed Jamshedpur.
Hooghly is perhaps the greenest district of West Bengal. Its fertile three-crop fields in Singur are no place to set up an automobile facility.
West Bengal has surplus land in the arid districts of Birbhum and Purulia. Besides, hundreds of factories have closed down in the State since the advent of the Left Front Government in 1977. The closed factories include numerous jute mills on the banks of the Ganga in Hooghly and north 24-Paragana districts. Tata Motors could have located any plot from there for its plant.
Agriculture cannot be sacrificed at the altar of industrialisation. More cars in India don't necessarily mean development. It surely means more dependence on petroleum-rich countries. Agriculture is more than a vocation for 60 per cent of Indians. It dates back to the roots; in the Ramayana, King Janaka is seen ploughing fields. "Son of a farmer" is still an identity many Indians boast of ".
The debate on this blog is interesting to see because it shows how thoroughly the media has mislead us on the issue of energy.
Though i have to take it back -- it is their job to mislead, its for people to think on their own (the essence of "vivek").
So here is the situation:
India needs power, no doubts (we can come to the intent later).
Complication:
Sourcing is key, and in the final analysis, nuc and alternative are only fringe players (due to high costs or unpredictability respectively).
Resolution:
No choice but to fix our "fuel heads" i.e. secure coal mines, oil fields etc. This is what sinopec and co are doing all over africa.
We have been running after the chimaerical nuc deal!
As regards agri guys, that is a separate challenge:
1. India has to make agri a strategic industry, no doubt.
However, that does NOT mean that 60% of the country still needs to be tilling fields.
Agri productivity improvements can treble our output while simultaneously quartering agri employment.
The freed labour can then be used for value added services (such as food processing, fresh food transport etc.)
The answere here to remain the same: infrastructure, infrastructure and infrastructure, and markets, markets, markets (to link the producers to consumers -- the same as mukesh's vision of creating links that span "farm to dinner fork"
san, i won't go into each of your points, but let me make a few.
1. no, we haven't actually signed the NPT, but we have acceded to IAEA and NSG conditions *just like* any non-nuclear-weapons state. so, for all practical purposes, we have signed the NPT as a non-weapons state.
2. we can't test, even if we haven't technically signed away our rights to do so, because they will immediately demand all of their stuff back if we test. if we don't give them their stuff, they will invade. see iraq. and don't think they can't invade: china and the us together can easily invade by opening up multiple fronts. we don't have the nuclear-tipped ICBMs that would make them, or at least the yanks, think twice. see, 7th fleet in the indian ocean, 1971. they wouldn't have done that if we had a few IRBMs.
3. you are making a facile assumption that NSG waiver == immediate large amounts of electricity. (the old 50s propaganda that nuke-based electricity will be so cheap that it wont be worth metering). it will be at least 2030 before there will be large-scale nuke energy, and even the UPA admits that nukes will never account for more than 7% of india's energy needs. the other 93% has to come from elsewhere. and precisely for the reason that the US doesn't want another major industrial power threatening it like china is, they will put all sorts of barriers in the way. these guys are all clever about their own interests -- note how the chinese buy up our iron ore, while keeping theirs in the ground as a strategic reserve
4. we have to agree to disagree on agriculture and agri-business. i think you simply don't see that this year's commodity price boom was not a random spike, but a harbinger of trends in future. for instance, there is a huge land-grab in russia for de-collectivizing the fertile black russian soil. the chinese are buying up farmland in africa. *everybody* is worried about food security *even more* so than energy security. if we don't invest hugely in food-related businesses, we screw ourselves.
5. i also don't understand your obsession with manufacturing. it's so... 1950's! and i know you're not that old :-) anybody remember 'the graduate' and "plastics!"? that's what i am reminded of when you trot out this argument, which you do regularly every couple of months. please don't talk like a nehruvian stalinist, with ideas about 'commanding heights of the economy', etc. this needs other endowments, including a much better educated workforce. we are also better off not screwing up the land. this is one good thing about kerala, despite all the crap the communists do. the land is not damaged too much by industrial effluvient, except an area around cochin.
6. i am not talking about agriculture as a labor absorber (the old farmer+plough scenario), i am talking about investing large amounts of capital so that we become an absolute agri-products superpower. i am talking about billions invested in infra, storage, value-add. i also believe this will absorb a fair amount of people, but that is secondary. the primary issue is *competitive advantage*. we have good land and good water, let's use it. let's move the industry to marginal land, as gujarat has done in the marginal salt-afflicted seafront land where it is setting up SEZs -- no problems with the locals then.
Rajeev, I think we need to talk about having *something* as a labour absorber, because if it's not going to be Call Centres and if it's not going to agriculture, then it's going to be street protests and riots as the labour absorber.
See again the link I posted on France:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf40.html
If they can do it, we can too. We need to massively build up the infrastructure in our country to ultra-modern levels. There is too little industry, too much poverty and too much squandered human potential in our country for us to keep holding our breath and wait for NPT to collapse.
The progress of the 3-stage nuclear program is too slow. We'd have to forego economic development in the meantime. Under the new arrangement, we can accelerate our economic development now, and in the meantime we can concurrently develop our thorium breeder technology to allow self-sufficiency in fuel for the future. If we decide to test, we'll have to give equipment back, of course. But we'll have the means to replace it with our own newer-generation stuff at that point. Consider it a future retirement of equipment, but without having to deal with the headaches of disposal storage, since we'll be giving it back to them.
I appreciate what Arun Shourie and Brahma Chellaney have said, but I feel K Subrahmanyan trumps them with his big-picture thinking and better track record. We are not sacrificing our security, since we are retaining our nuclear deterrent and the means to maintain it, as well as leaving the way open to upgrade it in the future, if need be. Our legal right to test is preserved.
" this is one good thing about kerala, despite all the crap the communists do. the land is not damaged too much by industrial effluvient"
Very true.
Bananas grown in Kerala soil are far more delicious than any enormous looking ones imported from other countries.Same goes for fruits & vegetables grown locally in wetlands of West Bengal.The varieties of brinjals and rice grown in Godavari belt.
India has been importing pulses from Canada & Myanmar. As Rajeev points out everyone around understands the vital importance of food except India.
If good health for all is truly our objective , then flourishing of our indigenous Ayurveda , Siddha , Herbal and its spinoffs like herbal cosmetics etc necessitate we focus on agri , flori and horticulture.Think of the potential of Spices and condiments.
Musquitoes to bed bugs can be effectively controlled by growing the right kind of plants.Butter from entirely pasture ( sans pesticides) fed cows is an unalloyed health promoter.
Farmers need to be empowered not weaned away.I was speechless when I found a farmer (hindu) from Chengalpet (TNadu) who singlehandedly has nurtured an awesomely emerald green farm for a Kuwaiti Sheikh with Neem , Mango ,Vilvam, Banana , Pomegranate and lots of flowers and vegetables too. Arabs are not averse to investing in greenhouse or organic farming.There are many like that.And that hindu gardener/farmer is very happy with his Arab employer.Not being persecuted.
India not only mismanages everything but lacks vision.
China exports fruits like lychees & herbs like leaves of lemon & narthanga trees. Lychees are atrociously expensive in India and hardly ever available in plenty.
Click on the link below to know about the rich potential:
http://www.uppercrustindia.com/25crust/twentytwo/gourmet1.htm
cricket and bollywood CANNOT sustain Bharatvarsh.
While we are on it let me state some facts that were not reported in the ELM of India.
During the recent shortage of rice when India rashly thundered it imposed a ban on export of certain varieties of rice ( came up with garbled threats followed by shamefaced denials)Pakistan acted smart.It said:
" We would never let the hungry starve. No ban on export of rice "
Saudi immediately warned India:
"If you renege on your contract and don't send rice, your asian population would be denied whatever stocks of rice/wheat we have".
Not just that.It immediately took steps to invest heavily in agriculture.For quite some years
have been into organic cultivation of many vegetables like okra ,beans, cruciferous ones , tomatoes, cucumbers etc.
When it comes to enforcement of any rule or law they are quite uncompromising.Which is laudable.
The Royal Family of Kuwait has designated an area as sanctuary for certain animals and birds with rapid afforestation.And it is inaccessible to the public.No picnic or sightseeing allowed.
And what does indian ambassador (tambram)do? In the name of showcasing of *indian culture* brings in shahrukh khan and the entire brood to stage nautanki.
Is it any wonder govt of india does not command any respect?
>>>> NSG WORKS ON CONSENSUS, AND HYDE ACT IS NOT PART OF NSG RULES. France, Russia, etc could still continue to deal with us, even if Hyde Act compels the US to stop cooperating with us. Hyde Act compels USA to ask NSG to stop cooperation with India, but HYDE ACT CANNOT COMPEL NSG MEMBERS TO FOLLOW/OBEY US DEMANDS
=======
It was US which forced the NSG to open up nuclear trade with India. So, the US can very well force NSG to obey US demands.
Do I need to remind people here that NSG was created specifically to hinder India's development as a nuclear-weapon state?
Excerpt from History of the NSG
The NSG was created following the explosion in 1974 of a nuclear device by a non-nuclear-weapon State, which demonstrated that nuclear technology transferred for peaceful purposes could be misused.
The NSG Guidelines were published in 1978 as IAEA Document INFCIRC/254 (subsequently amended), to apply to nuclear transfers for peaceful purposes to help ensure that such transfers would not be diverted to unsafeguarded nuclear fuel cycle or nuclear explosive activities.
Darkstorm, over the next couple of years we'll become a member of NSG. Yes, it's understood that we're not going to test willy-nilly. But if there's a dire national security threat, then we still have the legal right to test, which we have not signed away. We can still simultaneously develop the 3-stage thorium program, to achieve self-sufficiency through thorium. But of course in the meantime, uranium is more economical to us than thorium.
san,
1. this business about labor rioting in india is unlikely. nobody is going to riot in the streets about not enough jobs. india probably already has 100 million unemployed people who are not rioting. why, the kkkangress will just shout a bunch of slogans about 'remove poverty' and 'housing, bread and clothing' and the hired media will convince all these people they are doing great.
heck, with 200 million unemployed people, nobody is rioting in china either, even though their envy-quotient should be higher, if anything -- their coastal people are doing much better than the interior people.
so that's not a good reason to surrender. but yes, it would be a good idea to employ all these people, i agree. because it's a criminal nehruvian stalinist waste of people's abilities to not employ them.
2. services are not call-centers. unless manufacturing is all screwdriver jobs done by illiterates. so don't demean services by talking about call-centers. your friendly neighborhood legal outsourcer or accountant -- that is the future of services. you can't get these jobs unless you're educated, just the same as you can't get decent manufacturing jobs as an illiterate. so there's a huge systemic problem about the crummy primary education system, but the fact is that nobody is going to fall over themselves to set up big industry in india if there are no educated workers anyway. this applies to agri-business as well. but the point i keep harping on that seems to escape you is COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE. *anybody* including bloody bangladesh can set up low-end, polluting, manufacturing industries. very few countries have the agricultural endowment of india. so let's do food, and sell it to bangladesh and china and they can sell us their rubber dogshit made in hongkong, as tom cruise was told in 'top gun'.
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