India needs to do more to project its robust nuclear security system, says Rakesh Sood

Former prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh's special envoy on disarmament and proliferation, Rakesh Sood, on Tuesday underlined the need for Indian nuclear establishment to open up more to improve India's international acceptability.

He said though India has been opening up after joining the nuclear community, there is a need to do more which will improve India's status in the world community.

"It is a pity we haven't done enough and also not projecting effectively our robust system," he said while speaking after releasing an international study report, titled 'Nuclear Security in India', authored by Dr. Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan of Observer Research Foundation and published by ORF.

He, however, agreed with the report's suggestion that India should improve its outreach efforts.

Sood further said that India is at the most vulnerable spot in the world where there is a great danger of jihadists getting possession of nuclear materials in Pakistan.

Dr. Rajagopalan said: "Though India has a robust nuclear security regime in place, we could possibly do better job of advertising to the world that we do. This becomes particularly important in a globalised world when we are dependent on other countries for a variety of issues, like India's case of membership into some of the technology export control groups, including the Nuclear Suppliers Group."

Explaining the importance of nuclear security, she said the International Atomic Energy Agency's Incident and Trafficking Database states that between January 1993 and December 2013, there were a total of 2477 incidents of thefts and other unauthorised activities involving nuclear and radioactive materials.