The nuclear assets Bill

India should take a forward-looking view

The modified Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill that the Indian Parliament is now expected to pass, with the government securing the help of the main opposition party, was originally not only poorly drafted but was badly sold. Many of the changes now being made could have been incorporated into the original draft if the officials responsible for drafting had done their homework better, and the Congress party had consulted the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) earlier. The only claim that the government can make is that it drafted a sub-optimal Bill to enable the Opposition to improve upon it and then declare support! In the event, the debate on the draft Bill has certainly helped produce a better Bill and also cement political consensus around it. Predictably, the Left has adopted its ostrich-like posture on facts and waxed eloquent on its self-generated fiction on the issue. The charge that the Bill is a “gift” to the United States does not stand to scrutiny when even Russia, France, Korea and all other nuclear power equipment suppliers have demanded such supplier protection, and India’s patriotic Department of Atomic Energy has itself demanded operator protection! The Left’s distorted view is part of its outdated politics, but the BJP’s myopia, fanned by the party’s rabble-rousers, and the Congress party’s “hunt with the hounds and run with the hares” strategy have all combined to give a good initiative a bad name.

As many analysts have argued, and nuclear policy expert G Balachandran has written in the columns of this newspaper (May 30 and June 24, 2010), even the India- France cooperation agreement on the development of peaceful uses of nuclear energy, signed in September 2009, requires that “each party shall create a civil nuclear liability regime based upon established international principles”. This is precisely what the government of India has done. The various amendments suggested by members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology are in line with what experts believed would be the likely, and advisable, changes. In the draft Bill, the liability of the operator had been capped at Rs 500 crore, and this is now proposed to be increased to Rs 1,500 crore. The Vienna Convention does not set any maximum limit to operator liability and India cannot sign the Paris Convention which is restricted to the members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development only. Hence, the operator liability can be set at any level by India and still be in line with international conventions on nuclear liability. The supplier liability idea is a dubious one, especially since India too hopes to be a supplier of nuclear power equipment and technology one day. It would be foolhardy to tie one’s legs up before even joining the race.