There is a compelling and urgent need to take a relook at our participation in the ILC project, as its objectives and outputs are entirely of the basic research kind, which a desperately poor country like ours can ill afford and whose outputs we can draw on from the pool of world knowledge. Our involvement in ITER, however, should — if we get really involved in it and secure considerable technical skills, experience and technical documentation pertaining to thermonuclear fusion reactors — give us an insurance on a potentially inexhaustible energy source, albeit in the 2030-2040 time-frame.

The writer was science advisor to Indira Gandhi when she was PM, and secretary of various scientific departments