Presumably the retired scientists as a group — although some individual scientists have expressed such doubts — do not question either the veracity of this statement or the capacity and capability of the current stream of nuclear scientists’ to carry out their tasks. If they do, they ought to come out openly and state that they do not have confidence in the capability of our weapon designers to satisfy the needs of the Strategic Nuclear Command, assuming of course that they are aware of these needs. If on the other hand, they feel that the design and fabrication capabilities are there but not enough fissile material, they ought to express these concerns openly. However, even in that case nothing in the proposed agreement would compromise our capability to produce fissile material to fulfill our strategic goals.

This is not to say that there can be no future scenario which may require India to conduct a test. All indications are that there is a broad consensus in the strategic community that, one, there is no need at the present moment for any further tests given the present security scenario; two, India should now concentrate on delivery systems — their accuracy, range and other parameters; and three, the costs associated with a test now are far more than any benefits that a test may confer on our strategic programme. The situation in 1998 was different. At that time India’s economic integration with the global economy was far less and hence the costs of sanctions were also far less.

... contd.