Public Policy in India: A Closer Look at India’s Nuclear Policy

Public policy is the process through which governments regulate the lives of the state and its people for governance and public administration through laws, legislations, rules, regulations, and government programmes. Such policies are formulated, implemented, and established in an official capacity by various branches of government. Non-governmental institutions such as national think-tanks also undertake policy research and analysis to better elucidate legislative objectives that allocate resources for various aspects of national governance. Strengthening the bond between policy-making and policy research and analysis improves the performance of agencies and bureaucracy by creating space for amendments and modifications known as policy reform. Policy reforms are an important feature of policy-making because it provides the necessary flexibility required for adaptation to changing times. Some main categories of public policy are; education, health, justice, economic affairs (budget, taxes, etc), civil society and culture (rights, duties, etc), environment, security, and foreign policy.

Nuclear policy is an important segment of public policy and is a crucial subcategory of foreign policy that has implications at the national and international levels, especially in the context of globalisation. India’s nuclear policy has been evolving since its origins in the late 1930s and 1940s throughout the changing international milieus. Over the decades, particularly those after independence in 1947, India’s policies regarding the pursuit of atomic energy resources for civilian and military purposes underwent strategic transformations to satisfy the national interests of the time. In 1998, India declared itself a nuclear weapons state and for the first time, engaged in threshing out a coherent, articulate, and official nuclear policy. A formal nuclear doctrine was thus created in 2003, followed by politically significant events in the form of the 123 Agreement or the U.S.-India Civil Nuclear Agreement that was initiated in 2005 and entered into force in 2008.

The historic agreement had major consequences for India’s bilateral relationships with China, Pakistan, and the U.S. who are also nucleararmed nations. Moreover, the exceptional nature of the deal that has afforded India a special status has implications for nuclear stability in the South Asian region that is home to the “nuclear triad” China-India- Pakistan. This paper will focus on the evolution of India’s nuclear policy as a critical element of public policy. It will emphasise how nuclear policy is a key section of public policy, and explore the national, regional, and international determinants of India’s nuclear policy. It will also address its impact on nuclear stability in South Asia after 2020 which has already witnessed an unmistakable shift in India’s security relationships with its nuclear-armed neighbours.