PAK's Vociferous protests at India being invited to join Nuclear/Space global suppliers' 'clubs'

Dear Friends! I saw today the piece in the 27/1/2011 Times of India on the above. Thought the whole matter was hilarious. Am reproducing it for your convenience & edification! My personalized ‘REBUTTAL’ (having worked in both our Nuclear & Space programs for 18yrs!) is given after the ‘PAK's ranting TOI piece’

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GENEVA: Pakistan warned major powers on Tuesday against granting India membership of four key multilateral export control regimes that allow trade in nuclear and other materials, as proposed by the United States. The plan, announced during US President Barack Obama's visit to India last November, would further destabilize the volatile nuclear-armed South Asian region, said Zamir Akram, Pakistan's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

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This reinforced Pakistan's opposition, announced a year ago, to global negotiations to ban future production of nuclear bomb-making material, he said. "These developments will amount to a paradigm shift in strategic terms", Akram said in a speech to the opening session of the UN-sponsored Conference on Disarmament. "The message that such steps transmit is that the major powers can change the rules of the game if it is in their interest to do so," he added.

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Pakistan is the only one of 65 member states holding up consensus to launch the fissile talks, arguing that existing stocks of plutonium and enriched uranium should be included to counter its neighbor's advantage. The United States clinched a civilian nuclear deal with India in 2008, ending its nuclear isolation and granting it access to nuclear fuel and technology while allowing it to continue its nuclear weapons program.

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The Obama administration has announced backing for Indian membership of four regimes: the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Australian Group, which aims to reduce the spread of chemical and biological weapons, and the Wassenaar Arrangement, a multinational effort to control the transfer of conventional arms and dual-use technology.

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"Apart from undermining the validity and sanctity of the international non-proliferation regime, these measures shall further destabilize security in South Asia," Akram said. The 46-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group tries to ensure that nuclear exports are not diverted for military purposes. But Pakistan's envoy said that membership would enable India to improve its nuclear weapons and delivery capability.

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After amusing myself with the above PAK shenanigan, I realized that maybe we Indians have very short memories about our own two national programs that most Indians take some pride in esp in their huge contribution to India’s National Pride & Resurgence. (I worked happily for 18 years in them till '88, then left govt. for good to kick-start the non-existent venture capital movement for Indian Technopreneurs, by setting up TDICI from scratch as its founder-President/CEO, better known now as ICICI Ventures! Those who don’t know me from Adam may wish to see my career/professional profile, under 'Faculty' in www.greatlakes.edu.in So I wrote this, shall we say, 'rebuttal'(?):

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"I started my techno-managerial career after IIT & IIM-Ahmedabad in our nuclear program under Vikram Sarabhai who picked me from the campus of his own creation; then, years after his untimely death, shifted to the Space Program under the great 'triad' led by Profs Satish Dhawan, Yash Pal, Dr Brahm Prakash (May this great foursome, my first professional 'gurus' live forever in heaven or earth AND in the memory of my motherland!); and with Dr Rangan, Kalam, Siddhartha, Sridharamurthy and a host of technologist-patriots as colleagues. Of the associated bureaucrats only T N Seshan commands my respect, to this day, as a genuine institution builder & patriot.

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I challenge anyone (other than halfwits, total ignoramuses, imbeciles & opinionated asses!) to deny in public debate with me that India's Nuclear AND Space Programs are TOTALLY, COMPREHENSIVELY Indian achievements!

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Of course, the then Soviets helped us by orbiting our own experimental spacecraft in the seventies & early eighties. Our launch vehicle successes came later (thanks to Kalam's leadership, for which he was kicked upstairs!). So did France, giving us a piggyback ride for our APPLE (India’s pioneering experimental geostationary communications satellite) in the 3rd developmental flight of their ARIANE.

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Of course the Americans (GE) SOLD Tarapur Reactors to us & the Canadians marketed their Heavy Water moderated, Natural Uranium fuelled 'CANDU' reactors to us at the start of our Nuclear Power Program and made enough money from an indigent nation. (Did they get us to sign the NPT, CTBT, whatever then?)

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To this day the French (CNES, SEP) & the European Space Agency praise our contribution to the development of their Ariane flagship launcher, wrt to the 60+T Viking Liquid Engine (same as our own ‘Vikas’) and our supply of thousands of flawless transducers from B'lore for the ARIANE workhorse series. Even NASA, very reluctantly, appreciated the young Indian (YS Rajan, RM Vasagam, Pramod Kale) team’s development of the communications payload for its pioneering ATS-6 Demo cum Applications Satellite that supported, among others, India’s unique & hugely successful SITE experiment in the seventies. This brilliant team was generously loaned to NASA by Vikrambhai.

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No other country, not even China, USA, Japan, ESA can match, nor even hope to match, India’s high indigenous content, leading to extreme cost effectiveness & price-competitiveness globally, in Spacecraft/Launch Vehicles/Ground Systems/Components/Sub-Systems/Nuclear power plants/bombs/ballistic missiles!

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{During my twelve years with ISRO, I was mandated to set up a Space Industry for India, which I did traversing every nook & corner; cranny & crevice, from Hardwar to Kanyakumari; I was mandated to direct the budget of ISRO/DOS & take responsibility for techno-economic analyses (& effectiveness of every major activity, incl. 'Spin-Off' Technologies!)}. I was for starters mandated to oversee everything connected with propellants, advanced materials, composites, polymers, technology development projects, whatnot! I was soon happily wearing 3-4 techno-managerial hats for our Space program!}

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Over a 100 technologies, critical to autonomy in 'Space' were identified in '76; systematically targeted for R&D & technology transfer to small-medium high-calibre Indian 'technopreneurs' for buy back as well as 'spin-off markets development! Scores of Indian & International patents patents, copyrights, design registrations and other IPRs were taken, exceeding the numbers of scores of Indian Govt labs put together! Technopreneurship development across India was our obsessive pursuit. The response from Indian Industry, especially the technology sector, was unprecedented. We supported hundreds of Industrial techno-patriots with ISRO's open door policy, our generous Technology Consultancy & Technology Transfer systems, Access to test facilities; We performed FEASIBILITY & MARKET SURVEYS for our private sector friends, helping them to get licenses AND loans during the horrible licence-permit-quota Raj era, encouraging them to export (Xcept to Pakis & Chinks in their respective main-lands AND the Qadirbhai global network!), etc., etc. It led to such an unexpected groundswell and buzz throughout India, especially in Corporate India and and the technologists-led SSIs/SMEs sectors, that I happily cut my own three Program OFFICES' miniscule promotional budgets in ISRO Hq to ZERO! Little wonder that ANTRIX Corp (which I happened to initiate as the Corporate Front of India's Space Program, just before I quit govt. for good to kick-start the country’s venture capital movement), is already a major exporter in global Space Systems & myriad products, earning over 1,000 Cr per annum for India, ably led until his recent retirement by one of my own former deputies!

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The fast breeder reactor technology development, pioneered by the French forges ahead today, not in France, but only in India, in Kalpakkam. In its own interest, with its vast Thorium resources, miniscule Uranium reserves, huge power deficit, huge but dirty coal reserves, piffle in oil & gas, India will continue to lead global Thorium 232 derived nuclear fuel development. The rest of the world has started to look curiously at what the Indians are doing tinkering with such potential wealth AND whether they can get a finger in the pie before the Indians start imploding in their abominable mis-governance and corruption! Undoubtedly, too, BOTH our Nuclear & Space Programs deserve far better leadership than the mediocrity or worse that they have been dished out after the truly greats, Drs Bhabha, Sarabhai, Dhawan, Brahm Prakash, Yash Pal, Kalam sequentially retired from the scene! Thanks to their great vision, humanist leadership and tenacious patriotism, India's Nuclear & Space Successes owe NOTHING or at least precious little, to ANY foreigners!

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Unlike Pak's stealth of enrichment technology, smuggling of Maraging Steel (Pak spy Parvez was caught red-handed by US secret agents!), nuclear bombs (from Chinese), ballistic missiles (Nodong & TaepoDong from N Korea), underground proliferation trade (sale of stolen uranium enrichment centrifuges & systems by the Pak ‘Hero’ Abdul Qadir Khan’s gang with ISI backing to N. Korea, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq(?), Malaysia(?), etc for misc. fathroo ‘Islamic’ bombs). [The Dutch who caught & arrested Qadirbhai for stealing docs/materials from URENCO, when he tried to flee, released this worthy thief, the ‘Shan of Pakistan’ under, believe it or not, US (CIA) pressure! The same North American imbeciles want to interrogate today's multi-dollar-billionaire Qadirbhai NOW! Who doesn’t, whether Osama or Obama???!!! When Bhutto vowed Pakistan to eat grass for a thousand years till they made the bomb, he probably didn’t care that they stole/borrowed it, saving those thousand years & billions of USDs, only to ultimately eat crow!]

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India is being (belatedly!) invited to join 'club' after ‘club’ NOW by the same countries that denied any cooperation to India, and treated us as ‘pariahs’ after our ’74 Pokhran blast! Why should India even bother to acknowledge that we had already arrived decades ago! The rest of the world is already dependant OR has a vested interest in our unmatched low-priced Spacecraft, IRS Imagery, components, Launch Vehicles, Launch Services, Tracking Services, etc., etc.

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Which country interested in Nuclear Power in the future can do without Indian Thorium-derived fuel supplies and technology? Having failed to suppress generations of techno-patriots of India (EVEN if they regularly bought AND continue to buy, our own indigenous politico-bureaucratic-criminal nexus of New Delhi), the so called advanced countries NEED India now to join their commercial & security/‘non-proliferation’ cliques!

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Does Israel bother, knowing well that, unlike India, it can never be formally invited to any such club???!!! Let us retain a modicum of self-respect. If nothing, we owe that much, i.e. some respect, for the memories of the greatest patriots of post-independence India: Bhabha, Sarabhai, Dhawan, Brahm Prakash. Did any of them advocate anything other than self-reliance and national development? Did any of them take ‘false-pride’ in silly, prohibitively expensive, irrelevant, loony lunar launches???!!! High time we grew up as a country to inherit [why should we even lower ourselves to "claim"!] our rightful, inevitable place in the comity of nations!

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Does New Delhi listen to anything other than its own fathroo voices these days?????

 

by Prof P Sudarshan