Missiles and flags

The optical fibre link between Amritsar and ahore that Pakistan agreed to this week will probably be more politically consequential than the Cruise missile it tested with some fanfare on Thursday. Despite Islamabad’s breathless claims, and the headlines in the world media, India — sensibly — refused to react. Having acquired its own advanced Cruise missiles, in co-operation with Russia, Delhi had no reason to panic over Islamabad’s latest missile test. As two of the world’s oldest and largest militaries, the Indian and Pakistani armed forces will inevitably get what other advanced countries have in their arsenals. As long as India and Pakistan engage with each other, expand cooperation and maintain nuclear transparency, the introduction of new weapons systems by either side need not lead to instability. The subcontinent’s enduring insecurity is rooted in the nature of Indo-Pak politics and not the character of weapons systems the two nations acquire. The Amritsar-Lahore cable is about changing the security politics in the subcontinent.

In recent years, the development of nuclear and missile capabilities have got associated with political glamour and national achievement that are not easily justified given the six decades old technologies in question. The national security state at home and the non-proliferation ayatollahs in Washington, who raise a hue and cry over every minor technological advance, allowed weapons scientists in India and Pakistan to emerge as heros. Wrapping themselves in the national flag, the nuclear and defence establishments in India and Pakistan turned into unaccountable enclaves. In Pakistan A.Q. Khan set up a nuclear smuggling racket. In India, the weapons establishments have become scientific ghettoes that have little to show for themselves other than slogans of self-reliance.

As the peace process with Pakistan unfolds and the Bush Administration reins in the non-proliferation fundamentalists in Washington, India must conduct a national audit of its nuclear and defence establishments. Having cornered the lion’s share of India’s research and development resources since independence, have the Department of Atomic Energy and the Defence Research and Development Organisation delivered enough in return? If it wants a bigger bang for its defence buck, Delhi needs to review the work of these two departments and enforce long overdue institutional reform to bring them up to speed in the 21st century.