India's “Strategic Enclave”: Civilian Scientists and Military Technologies

Armed Forces & Society

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 1992, Pages 231-252

  Abraham, Itty ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84970727883     PISSN: 0095327X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X9201800205     Document Type: Article

References (28)

1. One study raising this question is not that recent. See Richard Park and Stephen P. Cohen, India: Emergent Power? (New York: Crane, Russell, 1977). More recently, see Jerrold F. Elkin and Andrew Ritezel, “India,” in The Defense Policies of Nations: A Comparative Study, ed. D.J. Murray and Paul R. Viotti (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), esp. 525-27; Stephen P. Cohen, ed., The Security of South Asia (New York: Praeger, 1989); Srikant Dutt, India and the Third World: Altruism or Hegemony? (London: Zed Books, 1985); G.K. Reddy, “India Wants Islands Free from Big Power Influence,” Hindu (Madras), 9 February 1982; Gowrishankar Sundaram and Mike Howarth, “India: Indigenous Programs Flourishing amid Defence Modernization,” International Defence Review 19, 3 (April 1986): 435-44. The notion of India as a regional power plays a central though sometimes implicit role as well in most of the nuclear-proliferation literature.
2. In his recent article, Mohammed Ayoob recognizes the need to expand the meaning of security but eventually restricts it to “vulnerabilities” at the level of the state. See Mohammed Ayoob, “The Security Problematic of the Third World,” World Politics 43 (January 1991): 257-83, esp. 259.
3. For an example of the multiple linkages involved in a single project, see Figure 1 in Arun Prasad, “Gas Turbine Research and Development in India,” Journal of the Aeronautical Society of India 41, 2 (March/May 1989): 245.
4. The interviews I conducted with a variety of officers of the Indian armed forces from September to December 1989 made this abundantly clear. Once retired, however, officers are likely to admit the importance of indigenous production while still bemoaning the lack of quality of domestic products. These findings are discussed in my forthcoming Ph.D. dissertation, “Security, Technology and Ideology: Strategic Enclaves in Brazil and India,” Department of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
5. Roy M. Macleod, “Scientific Advice for British India: Imperial Perceptions and Administrative Goals, 1898-1923,” Modern Asian Studies 9, 3 (1975): 351.
6. Vikram Sarabhai, “Organization for Development Tasks: Atomic Energy Commission of India,” in Management for Development, ed. Kamala Chowdhry (Delhi: Vikas Publishing, 1974), 21.
7. The arguments of scholars suggesting the technological limits on Third World defense industries apply with greater force to these institutions. See Stephanie Neuman, “International Stratification and Third World Military Industries,” International Organization 38,1 (1984): 167-97.
8. However, imports from abroad, mostly to replace aging equipment and made easier by large hard-currency surpluses, were extensive during the 1950s. See Raju G. C. Thomas, The Defence of India: A Budgetary Perspective (Delhi: Macmillan, 1978).
9. For a discussion of the spatial development of the security complex, see Arun P. Elhance, “Spatial Organization of Arms Production in India: Determinants and Impacts” (Paper presented at the Western Regional Science Meeting, Hawaii, 13 February 1990).
10. Annual Report 1986-87Ministry of Defence, Government of India.
11. Figures on state finances are from International Financial Statistics Yearbook: 1989 (Washington D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 1990), 410-13. Unless otherwise mentioned, all figures are in 1960 s prices.
12. A retired BEML official, interview with author, Bangalore, India, 25 October 1989.
13. Research and Development Statistics 1988-89, Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, 49, 60.
14. The choice of the original heavy-water-type reactor was due to the potential for eventually developing fast-breeder thorium reactors; India has small reserves of uranium compared to its deposits of thorium. See Atomic Energy and Space Research: A Profile for the Decade 1970-1980 (Bombay: Atomic Energy Commission, 1970), 12.
15. This view has come under serious criticism today for its disregard of the long-term ecological and financial costs associated with atomic power. See Amulya Kumar and N. Reddy, “Is Power from Nuclear Power Necessary? It It Economical?” Information Unit on Militarization and Demilitarization in Asia (IUMDA) Newsletter 2-3 (1990), 140-53.
16. See Ashok Kapur, India*s Nuclear Option: Atomic Diplomacy and Decision Making (New York: Praeger, 1976), 170-71 and T.T. Poulose, “India's Nuclear Policy,” in Perspectives of India's Nuclear Policy, ed. T.T. Poulose (New Delhi: Young Asia Publications, 1978), 105.
17. Robert S. Anderson, Building Scientific Institutions in India: Saha and Bhabha, Occasional Paper Series, no. 11, Center for Developing-Area Studies, McGill University, Montreal, 1975, 81 (emphasis added).
18. See the collection of his speeches in Vikram Sarabhai, Science Policy and National Development, ed. Kamala Chowdhry (Delhi: Macmillan, 1974), esp. chaps. 3, 4, 8, 9 and 16, and Atomic Energy and Space Research.
19. K. Subrahmanyam quotes a speech by Indira Gandhi to the Washington, D.C., Press Club as early as 1966, in which she asserts that India already had the capability to produce the bomb. This was probably less than the full truth: while the design capability might have been present in 1966, some vital components, such as the atomic triggers, were probably not. K. Subrahmanyam, “India: Keeping the Option Open,” in Nuclear Proliferation Phase II, ed. Robert M. Lawrence and Joel Laurus (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1974), 112-48.
20. See the chapters by Bhabhani Sen Gupta and Ashok Kapur in Perspectives of India's Nuclear Policy.
21. A retired Indian general staff officer, interview with author, Madras, India, 20 October 1989.
22. Dhirendra Sharma, ed., The Indian Atom: Power and Proliferation (New Delhi: Politics and Social Action, 1986).
23. For a longer discussion, see G.S. Bhargava, “The Nuclear Power Industry: Need for Reappraisal,” IUMDA Newsletter 2-3,1990,126-39.
24. See “India enters the missile age,” Sunday (Delhi), 19 March 1988, and interview with Dr. Kalam, Telegraph (Calcutta), 16 June 1989. Hindu (Madras) 6 February 1990, p. 16 reported Abdul Kalam saying that using tested designs had saved three years of development time and cut costs by a third.
25. For details, see Sujata Patel, “The Baliapal Struggle and Displaced Communities,” Times of India (Bombay), 4 October 1989, 6.
26. An Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) scientist, interview with author, New Delhi, 11 November 1989.
27. See Gary Milhollin, “India's Missiles: With a Little Help from Our Friends,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (November 1989): 32.
28. Retired director of HAL, interview with author, Bangalore, 24 October 1989.