Anil Kakodkar has again raised the prospect of a fast-expanding nuclear power generating industry in a public-private mould. This is the latest move in our blow-hot-and-cold policies. Kakodkar is in the solid tradition of a number of distinguished policymakers who have raised this prospect for the last decade, opposed mainly by some Luddites who won’t unshackle industry and, at the other end, those who don’t want India to develop capabilities in this area and pooh-pooh the country’s capabilities. The new government must clearly follow up on the initiative Kakodkar has taken. 

It is instructive to recount past experience because we seem caught in some kind of time warp; every time someone makes what looks like progress, the opposite argument, at least a decade-and-a-half old if not more, is raked up and we are back to square one. The argument that India should allow the private sector in nuclear power generation is at least a decade and a half old. That there is stop-go in these arguments is brought out by two somewhat difficult to reconcile statements attributed to the highest level in India in the mid -’90s. On February 8, 1997, the influential Nihon Kezai Shimbun reported from Tokyo that the then prime minister “says his government intends to allow complete foreign ownership of nuclear power plants in India”. On February 9, Khergamwala reports this again from Tokyo, in The Hindu. But on March 5, 1997, according to the Agence France Presse, the PM tells Parliament that “no decision has been taken” to allow 100 per cent foreign ownership of nuclear installations in India and “there is no question of deviating from our nuclear policy”. Global think-tanks like the Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies reported this dutifully.

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