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February 14, 2003
India’s Missile Build-up
On January 19, 2003, the Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story with a screaming headline “Indian Firm Aided Iraq.” “In defiance of UN resolutions, a company used deceit to export material that could be used in weapons, Indian court records show,” said a paragraph highlighting details of the story.
Reporting from New Delhi, Bob Drogin, Times Staff Writer, made the revealing disclosure: “An obscure Indian trading company has provided the first clear evidence that Iraq obtained materials over the last four years to produce or deliver weapons of mass destruction. The company, NEC Engineering Private Ltd., used phony customs declarations and other false documents, as well as front companies in three countries, to export 10 consignments of raw materials and equipment that Saddam Hussein’s regime could use to produce chemical weapons and propellants for long-range missiles, according to Indian court sources…. US officials have not publicized the NEC case, in part to avoid embarrassing the Indian government about the lapse in its export controls….”
The media also showed due deference to New Delhi’s sensitivities. There was little mention of the LA Times story in the TV programs nor did it figure in the newspapers to sound alarm bells in Delhi. Yet, there was no letup in the media’s zeal to censure Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction; India’s complicity in Saddam’s sinister weapon-manufacturing game was conveniently ignored.
Strange logic which becomes all the more incomprehensible if one takes into account the recent outbursts of the two US ambassadors in the South Asia subcontinent - Powell in Islamabad and Blackwell in Delhi - against Pakistan, a frontline ally in the war against terrorism. The LA Times’ startling disclosure and the western world’s lukewarm reaction do not come as a surprise. India has been on a misguided course yet her adventurism has gone unnoticed in western capitols. And so does its repressive policy in Kashmir.
Consistent with this lamentable attitude, India’s recent test-firing of the nuclear-capable surface-to-air Akash missile and its attendant threat to Pakistan went largely uncommented in the media. It is only the academic circles that tend to remonstrate, though once in a blue moon, on such events. Which reminds one of a report appearing in ‘Scientific American’ on the test-firing of Agni, India’s intermediate range ballistic missile, a few years ago. The Scientific American report pointed to the awesome possibility of Karachi becoming a target of India’s nuclear-tipped missiles. Its contents were neither speculative nor over-exaggerated. The threat persists as demonstrated with the test-firing of Akash and its immense destructive potential.
The Indian missile build-up has been a sustained effort.
Its first success came in May 1989 with the test-firing of an Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) Agni. The test, according to the then Defense Minister K.C. Pant, signified India’s “potential to carry lethal warheads over long distances and deliver them with great accuracy.” Lethal is the parlance of IRBMs and ICBMs signifies nuclear payload capability.
Described as the ultimate weapon the Indian IRBM poses a threat not only to Pakistan but targets as distant as sixteen to two thousand five hundred kilometers away. Agni had the reach to strike at Saudia Arabia, Iran, the Gulf States, China , the then Soviet Union, Diego Garcia, and possibly the seventh fleet on an adventurous enterprise.
Thus while it launched India into a new orbit - one which she triumphantly shared with the US, the-then USSR, France, China and Israel - and imparted her the trappings of a mini superpower in terms at least of a military clout, if not the economic well-being of the country’s teeming millions, Agni occasioned criticism, both at home and abroad, for its colossal destructive potential.
Biju Patnaik, Orissa’s Janta Dal chief, was quick to protest to the Indian Prime Minister, “I sincerely hope that our defense experts are aware that attempts at mass destruction by nuclear strike are also a direct invitation to mass suicide at home.” In another communication he remonstrated, “Must India also participate in the ultimate crime of destroying life on this planet?”
Patnaik’s plain talking at that time was shared by many academics. Said Professor Dhirendra Sharma of New Delhi’s Jawahurlal Nehru University, “India’s entry into the super-power club is meaningless without first providing its citizens with basic necessities…. Evidently there are no strategic parameters which necessitate the spending of our meager resources on non-productive and obsolete weapons systems.”
The hawks in India seemed to share a different perception. Indra Nil Banerjie, for instance, exhorted the Indian government to go the whole hog lest the labor of innumerable scientists, huge investment “and most of all a historic opportunity to assert itself in global politics” is lost by India. Not surprisingly, the post-Agni developments witnessed a growing diplomatic aggressiveness on the part of New Delhi and the mood spelled out by an external affairs bureaucrat seemed to mirror Banerjie’s thinking, “ SAARC is important to us. But we have got to break out of our regional strait jacket and assert ourselves. Our area of concern extends from Afghanistan into (which mythologically Hindus claim as part of India) to the Indian Ocean.”
Stemming from such noble intents, Indian efforts to produce missiles received a major boost in July 1983 when the Integrated Guided Missile Development Program (IGMBP) was launched with an initial funding of rupees 380 crores. More than 53 independent institutions from the public and private sectors, including 19 defense research laboratories, seven universities, eleven ordnance factories, the Indian Space Research Organization, and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, joined hands to pool technical know-how and production skills to attempt self-sufficiency in missile production in the 1990s. The Defense Research and Development Laboratory (DRDL), the apex body to coordinate the effort, buzzed with feverish activity under the leadership of Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as the program gained momentum.
Dr. Kalam had a humble background - his father used to pick seashells to make a living - but his ambitions were hardly modestly tailored. He did not believe in ‘catching up’ with the advanced countries but strove to develop front-line technologies on the drawing board. “Our aim is to be the first in at least a few key areas of missile technology,” he declared, adding, “The country which has indigenous design capabilities is the winner…. If you only got second-hand technology, you can never hope to catch up with or have access to the state-of the-art equipment. You will always be behind.”
With this insight and Dr. Kalam’s resolve “technology respects technology and strength respects strength” results were not slow to come. In a short span of six years, India developed three missiles: Trishul, Prithvi, and Agni. The DRDL scientists later succeeded in the development of a few more missiles including Akash and the anti-tank Nag. The effort continues with renewed momentum every passing day.
In his Agni baptismal speech, the late Mr. Rajiv Gandhi is reported to have personally added a line to the prepared text, “We must remember that technological backwardness also leads to subjugation.” Ironically, these words carry a cryptic and deeper note for countries consistently subjected to Indian muscle flexing. afaruqui@pakistanlink.com
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