Against The Nuclear Deal

I opposed the Indo-US nuclear deal in a column published more than two years ago.

And the arguments I made then still stand:

What if there is a nuclear accident?

Will you like a nuclear power plant to be located in your city/town/village?

When there is no relief in torts, how can the average Indian risk nuclear power?

And if nuclear power is generated by the State, how will we ever attain the goal of 24x7 private electricity supply?

With the State in power generation, we will forever be plagued by power cuts.

And why don’t we have free trade with the people of America, so that we can all benefit from buying cheap Californian wine, Harley-Davidson bikes and other American products?

This Indo-US nuclear deal is a deal between the government of India and the government of the USA.

It is just like the deals our government used to routinely have with the Soviets when I was young – all government-to-government deals.

We don’t need such governments, nor do we need such deals.

We need free trade unilaterally – something I was also one of the first to call for.