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India’s emergence as a confident and responsible nuclear nation has required careful crafting of its nuclear policies. After Pokhran II and the Chagai Hills tests, the South Asian security architecture and with it, the whole matrix of nuclear diplomacy had undergone a paradigmatic shift. India’s nuclear diplomacy too acquired a new prominence after these events. It was important for India to improve its bilateral relations with major powers for strategic reasons. At the same time, it needed to address the challenge of its burgeoning energy needs at home. Therefore, quite distinctive from its earlier stance, India’s nuclear diplomacy after Pokhran II commenced in a fundamentally changed context and with a considerably new orientation, culminating in the much-discussed Indo-US nuclear deal.

This deal, the bellwether of India’s new-look nuclear diplomacy, and the special waiver (granted to India by the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group) have won her a respectable place at the international diplomatic high table and have opened up Possibilities of a whole new gamut of International nuclear commerce. This would as envisaged allow India to boost her domestic nuclear programme and widen her energy prospects.

India’s Nuclear Diplomacy after Pokhran II presents an analytical, perspectival and narrative exposition of the facts and issues involved in international nuclear gamesmanship, taking every care to maintain objectivity and balance. Flowing from years of intensive research and reflection, this book breaks new ground by not dilating the issues of nuclear security and the making of the bomb, which have been subjected to scholarly treatment in a variety of works since 1998, but by focusing on India’s nuclear diplomacy with the major global and regional powers, and the rationale of its stand vis-à-vis the NPT and CTBT. To reach out to the general reader, in addition to scholars of the subject, this book unravels the intricacies and technicalities of the post-Pokhran II diplomacy in lucid and comprehensible phraseology.

COMMENT:

This is a painstaking work on Indian nuclear diplomacy after the Sahkti series of tests in May 1998 that were followed quickly by Pakistan's tests at Chagai Hills. The author has analysed the conversion of the high dudgeon of not only the United States but also other major powers into 'engagement'.