Foreign Policy In Focus

New York Times piece, India Tries Using Cash Bonuses to Slow Birthrates, Jim Yardley details an Indian federal program. Intended to "allow India more time to curb a rapidly growing population that threatens to turn its demography from a prized asset into a crippling burden," it attempts to persuade rural Indian newlyweds to delay childbirth.

Though with . . .

. . . almost 1.2 billion people . . . roughly half the population is younger than 25. This 'demographic dividend' is one reason some economists predict that India could surpass China in economic growth rates within five years. India will have a young, vast work force while a rapidly aging China will face the burden of supporting an older population.

However, on the heels of the above "though" follows a monumental "but."

. . . if youth is India's advantage, the sheer size of its population poses looming pressures on resources and presents an enormous challenge for an already inefficient government to expand schooling and other services.

Still . . .

It was considered a sign of progress that India's Parliament debated "population stabilization" this month after largely ignoring the issue for years.

India may just be addressing the tip of the overpopulation iceberg, if in a more sensitive way than China's authoritarian one-child policy. But would that more states considered addressing population concerns as a "sign of progress." To some states a burgeoning population serves as another weapon, along with its armed forces and perhaps nuclear weapons, as a way to equalize its power with larger states. In the United States, meanwhile, overpopulation has become a "third rail" for politicians. First of all, it's contrary to the go-forth-and-procreate agenda of evangelicals and second, it invokes fear that Latinos will soon outnumber whites.

As Focal Points readers are no doubt aware, a sampling of overpopulation's perils include: depletion of natural resources such as oil and water; deforestation and resultant global warming; mass species extinctions; and, along with educational shortfalls, heightened infant and child mortality.

As part of our commitment to the most fundamental issues threatening humanity (not that we won't write about it at all, but climate change is addressed more ably elsewhere), Focal Points intends to feature posts about the earth's "carrying capacity" as we have been nuclear weapons.

One sure route for a state to be slapped with the label "rogue " is to develop nuclear weapons but shun the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. Pakistan refused to sign while North Korea signed but withdrew. Israel dodged the NPT by refusing to acknowledge it even developed nuclear weapons. We'll leave Iran out of the equation because, despite constantly testing the International Atomic Energy Agency's limits, it doesn't seem to have completed the process.

But, like Israel, another state developed nuclear weapons before the NPT (though without refusing to acknowledging them), and refrained from signing the treaty. In fact, the case could be made that it's more of a rogue than any of the other states. Oddly, it's the state with a reputation for being the most spiritual in the world since it's the birthplace of both Hinduism and Buddhism -- India, of course. Yet it (or its rulers and policymakers at the time) were seemingly out of touch with said spiritualism to such an extent that in 1974 they code-named India's first nuclear test the Smiling Buddha. They even scheduled it for the day on which the Buddha's birth is celebrated in India. This was only the start.

The founder of the Military Space Transparency Project, Matthew Hoey writes:

In 1998 U.S. sanctions were placed upon the country in response to more nuclear tests. When the Bush Administration lifted the aforementioned sanctions against India in the wake of . . . September 11, 2001, and then progressively loosened export and commerce laws against India, it ignored [India's refusal to sign not only the NPT, but] the Proliferation Security Initiative . . . the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty . . . or the Missile Technology Control Regime.

[In 2008] the United States approached the Nuclear Suppliers Group . . . to grant a waiver to India to commence civilian nuclear trade. … The implementation of this waiver makes India the only known country with nuclear weapons which is not a party to the Non Proliferation Treaty . . . but is still allowed to carry out nuclear commerce with the rest of the world. [Emphasis added.]

It's bad enough that the United States and the Nuclear Suppliers Group made India their pet rogue. But, Hoey writes, "It is also highly unlikely that India will subscribe to the treaty to Prevent an Arms Race in Outer Space." Even worse, "Indian military officials have set a target date to deploy an ambitious anti-satellite system. … for electronic or physical destruction of satellites . . . by 2015."

In conclusion, Hoey writes, "At a time when the international spotlight seems trained on North Korea and Iran, a growing tolerance for India's belligerence in building its nuclear and missile capabilities appears to shield it from similar scrutiny."

Why the tolerance? As Andrew Lichterman and M.V. Ramana write in Beyond Arms Control (2010, Critical Will), ". . . the nuclear deal is part of a broader set of [U.S.-Indian] agreements [which] US-based multinationals are . . . hoping to use . . . as a wedge to further open India to foreign investment and sales."

In the end, just more reasons that the Non-Aligned Nation movement (to which India supposedly belongs) can't take the nuclear powers seriously about disarmament.

"The United States has made new concessions as part of its civilian nuclear agreement with India," Nicholas Kravlev reported for the Washington Times back in April, "while New Delhi has yet to make it possible for U.S. companies to benefit from the unprecedented deal. … Washington agreed to Indian demands to increase the number of plants allowed to reprocess U.S.-supplied nuclear fuel from one to two [in order to] avoid long-distance transportation of dangerous materials. Arms control experts denounced the new deal saying it adds to the "damage" done by the original agreement."

For those unfamiliar with how damaging that was, Kralev reminds us that "the Bush administration went against established norms and allowed a country that has not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to use U.S.-supplied fuel to make plutonium, though for strictly civilian purposes."

Nor is it just the arms control crowd for which the United States engaging in nuclear commerce with India presents a problem. As Colum Lynch reported in his UN blog "Turtle Bay" at Foreign Policy . . .

"There is mistrust," said Egypt's U.N. ambassador, Maged A. Abdelaziz [according to whom] the five major nuclear powers are [among other things] permitting a special group of nations -- India, Israel, and Pakistan -- a free pass to produce nuclear weapons, without having to abide by the obligations of signatories to the NPT. "States outside the treaty are reaping the benefits of the treaty," he said.

As Andrew Lichterman and M.V. Ramana write in Beyond Arms Control (2010, Critical Will):

"Procedurally, if such a deal were to be agreed to at all, it should have been voted on by all states parties to the NPT rather than just by" those few states that compose the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). "By its very constitution, the NSG, consisting mostly of countries that engage in and profit from nuclear commerce, is a biased body, not suited to decide on the future of non-proliferation norms. … There is a sour irony in the NSG making such an exception for India, since the trade cartel was formed largely in response to India exploding a nuclear device in 1974. [Emphasis added.]

Meanwhile, what's this about New Delhi yet to make it possible for U.S. companies to benefit from the original deal? Disarmament considerations aside, is America being played by India? More likely, the aftershocks from Bhopal have yet to cease reverberating. As Kralev wrote in his Washington Times piece, "India thus far has failed to pass legislation that would release U.S. companies from liability in case of accidents [in the] two reactors expected to be built" under the original agreement.

Presumably, though, U.S., as well as Indian, corporations expect to ultimately prevail. Lichterman and Ramana again: ". . . the nuclear deal is part of a broader set of [U.S.-Indian] agreements [which] US-based multinationals are. . . hoping to use. . . as a wedge to further open India to foreign investment and sales." Of course . . .

In light of the spiraling collapse of the US financial sector, the notion that opening India to its particular brand of radically deregulated, short-term profit-driven "financial services" will promote "economic stability" is highly suspect. [Read: laughable. – RW] … The effect of the US-India deal. . . will be to bind India to a development path favourable to particular elements in the US political and economic elite and to their Indian counterparts. … nuclear power is most useful for serving. . . the consumption needs of the elites who profit from them. It has far less promise, however, for solving the energy needs of the vast majority of India's population. … Nuclear power, as the most expensive form of centralized electricity generation, is an inefficient way to deliver energy to this population living in villages spread out over a vast country side.

Meanwhile, whither sustainable development in this equation? Lichterman and Ramana explain that "use of decentralized, renewable energy technologies in India [would be] economically efficient. . . self-reliant. . .  and environmentally sound [and would promote] innovation and bring down prices."

We'll end with another irony to bookend the earlier instance cited by Lichterman and Ramana in which the Nuclear Suppliers Group made an exception for the state (India) in response to whose explosion of a nuclear device the NPG was, in large part, formed. "But even in terms of the urban rich," they write, "the reality is that nuclear power in India has been mostly a failure. [It generates] less than one percent of its total energy needs. This is unlikely to grow significantly."

Between India's elites failing to see the return they expected, its masses denied both energy and sustainable development, and U.S. plans thwarted at the moment by the Indian legislature, it looks like the India-U.S. nuclear deal has thus far been a lose-lose-lose deal.