"This book brings together the many pieces of India's nuclear puzzle and the ramifications for South Asia. The author examines the choices facing India from New Delhi's point of view in order to discern which future courses of action appear most appealing to Indian security managers. He details how such choices, if acted upon, would affect U.S. strategic interests, India's neighbors, and the world."--BOOK JACKET.

India has come a long way from being a nuclear pariah to a de facto member of the nuclear club. The transition in its nuclear identity has been accompanied by its transformation into a major economic power and underlines a pragmatic turn in its foreign-policy thinking. This book provides a historical narrative of the evolution of India’s nuclear policy since 1947, as the country continues its pursuit for complete integration into the global nuclear order. Situating India’s nuclear behaviour in this context, the book explains how India’s engagement with the atom is unique in international nuclear history and politics. Aided by declassified archival documents and oral history interviews, it focuses on how status, security, domestic politics, and the role of individuals have played a key role in defining and shaping India’s nuclear trajectory, policy choices, and their consequences.

In this book, the leading authority on India's nuclear program offers an informed and thoughtful assessment of India's nuclear strategy. Basrur shows that the country's nuclear culture is generally in accord with the principle of minimum deterrence but sometimes drifts into a more open-ended view.

This book examines the Indian nuclear policy, doctrine, strategy and posture, clarifying the elastic concept of credible minimum deterrence at the center of the country's approach to nuclear security. This concept, Karnad demonstrates, permits the Indian nuclear forces to be beefed up, size and quality-wise, and to acquire strategic reach and clout, even as the qualifier minimum suggests an overarching concern for moderation and economical use of resources, and strengthens India's claims to be a responsible nuclear weapon state. Based on interviews with Indian political leaders, nuclear scientists, and military and civilian nuclear policy planners, it provides unique insights into the workings of India's nuclear decision-making and deterrence system. Moreover, by juxtaposing the Indian nuclear policy and thinking against the theories of nuclear war and strategic deterrence, nuclear escalation, and nuclear coercion, offers a strong theoretical grounding for the Indian approach to nuclear war and peace, nuclear deterrence and escalation, nonproliferation and disarmament, and to limited war in a nuclearized environment. It refutes the alarmist notions about a nuclear flashpoint in South Asia, etc. which derive from stereotyped analysis of India-Pakistan wars, and examines India's likely conflict scenarios involving China and, minorly, Pakistan.

Publisher Fact Sheet The definitive history of India's long flirtation with nuclear capability, culminating in the nuclear tests that surprised the world in May 1998.

This book examines India’s nuclear strategy as it confronts the potential threat from both China and Pakistan. The potential threats - traditional as well as non-traditional CBRN threats - will be examined as will India’s approach to dealing with them. India’s nuclear arsenal, its dual purpose civil-military space program and its nascent BMD capability will be explored with a view to informing the reader as to the steps taken by India to confront its nuclear challenges. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

This book explores how anti-nuclear social movements impact the state’s civil nuclear policy and its implementation by presenting a historical-comparative case study of anti-nuclear movements in India. Drawing on social movement theory and empirical methods, the book demonstrates that the ability for anti-nuclear movements to impede the inception of nuclear plants – a key element of India’s civil nuclear policy – is determined by the movement’s collective action repertoires, the politicisation of nuclear power and the state’s larger developmental paradigm, and the openness of state input structures. The case studies of anti-nuclear movements in Haripur, Kudankulam and Kovvada demonstrate how the implementation of civil nuclear policy is also determined by the state’s technical and financial capacity and effective international collaboration. With a focus on theorisation of social movements and their impact, combined with empirical studies of anti-nuclear movements, as well as the historical trajectory of civil nuclear development, the book adds a new prism to the study of India’s civil nuclear policy and anti-nuclear opposition. It will be of interest to researchers working on social movements, state-society relations, energy studies and civil nuclear energy in the context of South Asia and the Global South.