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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Worswick who wrote (498)	5/13/1998 11:42:00 AM
From: Mohan Marette	Respond to of 12475

'Smiling Buddha confronted by a frowning world.' Good morning Worswick: I was wondering where you ran off to,very glad to see you back on the thread. Here is how the Chinese reacted according to one report. economictimes.com

To: Worswick who wrote (498)	5/13/1998 11:53:00 AM
From: Clayton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Worswick, Re: I wonder how many of the Indian originated "nationalists" here on this discussion group have ever spent any time let alone months and months like I have in Indian villages living on a village economy. Few. Pitifully few becasue they would see that the "new" India standing proud over the nuclear fires is something the country can't afford. Doesn't need. And will launch them (the Indian nationalists) on a road that a certain point it will be exceedingly difficult to turn back from. Your point is well-taken. But on the other hand, India was screwed over by China in the 60's, when the then-Prime minister Nehru was all idealistic and for peaceful co-existence with every body and by being unilateraly weak, militarily. As with any country, India's foremost concern should be about its national security and should do whatever it can to assure that. Other concerns take a back-seat when you are militarily threatened. BTW, having lived in the US(this is my home now, and grateful for that) for 14 years, I do see poverty, crime, drugs etc in the US. Does that mean that we should stop spending the hundreds of billions we spend on Military, foreign-aid etc and divert that money to eliminate those problems. Lyndon Johnson tried that and look where that led the country to. Regards, Clayton

To: Worswick who wrote (498)	5/13/1998 12:21:00 PM
From: k.ramesh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

Actually I am more overjoyed over the diversity of opinion among indians over this blast than the blast itself. Here is a longish Opposing view via email.... To those who are celebrating with upswelling chests and deep breaths, my congratulations. I'm not sure though how well prepared India is for the hangover that might follow. This is a big gamble for the ordinary Indian. It is a surefire winner for the Indian policy elite and the people who travel abroad at Indian taxpayers expense as well as for me. As an NRI,I will now tell my American neighbors to treat me with more respect because my country now has a hydrogen bomb. I am looking forward to a better interest rate, cheaper groceries and faster tenure when I show my Indian passport. It will certainly make our officials (those humble people who staff our ministries and consulates) walk with a bit more swagger when walking on offical duty. Our scientists can claim we too can do what was done by people in the West thirty years ago. Our military officials can claim more brownie points. But it will probably cost the ordinary Indian dearly if the international community's initial reaction is any indicator. The sheer pointlessness of the entire episode is mind-boggling. The strongest associations that come to mind ever since I heard of these explosions is of street thugs flexing their muscles to prove their manhood. Actions of this nature must be done for political, strategic and tactical reasons that will benefit the nation. Unfortunately I see the current govt as having made a call which will help them some internally maybe but will hurt the country much more. The BJP knows that Hindutva is running out of steam. So this ultra-militaristic ploy. The fact however is that this means nothing in reality. In spite of some tremendous economic and scientific development over the last five decades, the sad stark inescapable fact is that we Indians as a country are still economic beggars (and a cynic might say we are flexing our muscles to beg for more crumbs). For a beggar to throw stones will probably get him some bribes from the people whose houses are being stoned. It will not however get him out of beggary in the long run. As a proud Indian, I want to see my country make real progress, not behave like a bunch of hyper-active teenagers making a desperate play for parental attention. I am deeply disappointed that between a bunch of arrogant bureaucrats who seriously overestimate their importance in the world and a bunch of people who are so starved for attention that they will break plates to attract the attention of the "important" countries of the world we now will have ordinary Indians pay a serious price in economic and technological development. OK so that was the opinion part. Here is the analysis that underlies the opinions I have expressed above. Let us see how the game unfolds -- we make a nuclear (& thermo-nuclear) explosion. What next? To be credible as a big gun, you've got to make weapons (warheads) right? So we make em. Right Now you gotta keep em. So we keep em on trucks roaming the Indian countryside (with our population density and road conditions this is goona make the country's population feel really safe right?). Or perhaps because we can't do what the US does with its nuclear weapons keep em on the move) we will dig a big bunker under Red Fort and keep our tnw in a static depository? Makes it real secret doesn't it? Then we have the trivial problem of leaks and theft and the administrative costs associated with the entire layer of controls over tnw that we need to have. Bottom line, it will be a LONG time before we are effectively able to deploy tnws and the costs may actually be non-trivial. Even if we have done all that is discussed above already (and I'm assuming that GOI wouldn't have gone public had they not) what good does it do us? Does anybody really think we will drop one on anyone? Especially on a neighbor as close as Pakistan? Dare we even threaten China? Neither seems a reasonable game plan. We would be such a pariah if we ever did use a nuclear weapon that there is really no strategy short of complete insanity in which tnws play any part. Therefore, in all respects, this does very very little to change our security profile. What a program of developing nuclear weapons does is give physicists, engineers and technologoists, bureaucrats and military personnel money and resources and a chance to brag about Indian "science." The science part is a misnomer actually, hogwash to impress the highly literate but basically semi-educated (in the critical sense of the term) masses which the Indian elite and middle class provide in abundance: in other words,people who don't know the difference between dicovery and implementation.To be blunt, there is no science here, it is engineering and technology that is involved (the science was worked out a LONG time ago).I know several people who have made the argument that spending on military technology drives the economy of the West. There is some justification in that military spending can (not does) boost economic growth. But the physicists and technocrats among whom these arguments are popular are blissfully ignorant of any economic training and therefore about as competent to make and defend these arguments as I am to discuss the technical aspects of fission. Europe, Japan and the US are all shown as examples. These examples ignore the nature of colonial exchanges and imperfect markets for capital. In 150 years the fact that capital flows have now become global changes the utility of gunboat diplomacy. >Today, we realize that knowledge (information), skilled labor and >managerial skills can run rings around aircraft carriers and tnws. >Yet the technocrats stick to their guns -- how else to keep the funds? > >Not that I think we shouldn't build bombs, or explode devices -- why >should the Big 5 have all the goodies anyway. What matters most to me in this case is the strategic reasoning that goes behind the program implementation and that's the part which makes no sense. The program has been ready for years else we couldn't have had this thing go off so smoothly. So the question is why test now? Why in this way? Here the bureaucracy pushing a nervous BJP into an ultra-nationalistic stance seems to be the only reason. That is to say, we have made a huge statement to the world community as a result of the internal politics of governance in the country.Obviously what matters most in decisions of this magnitude and impact is the political and strategic fallout. The the decision to explode the weapons in this fashion, especially with a new government which has not even secured a firm grasp on the realities of governance is frighteningly >telling about the absence of any policy or goal at the top other than a desire to raise national pride and esteem. What better way to do this than to show the world that we too can set off our bombs! The hope is that the world community will not call our bluff. I'm not very optimistic that we'll win. Perhaps the engineers among us (and indeed the engineer hiding in each of us) can be happy that our countrymen and women can actually do something as sophisticated as successfuly test a thermo-nuclear device. But what strikes me as being forgotten in the euphoria is that then their job is to build what the customer pays for, not to think what should be. We are paying a lot of physicists and engineers a lot of money that could instead >be used in developing roads and electric lines which will enable our >programmers to conquer the world peacefully. This is a bad tradeoff. >Our pride in science and technology has totally obscured any common sense or strategic vision we may ever had. Monday, May 11 1998 is truly an important date in Indian history. If India is lucky, it will be the last major tantrum thrown by the Indian elite. Unfortunately, if history is any guide, spoilt brats make poor adults and given the bravado that I see, my best guess is that the cycle of petulant narcissism shown by the Indian scientifc, technical and administrative elite and intelligentia will continue unabated by any concern for reality.