It was a blistering hot May afternoon of 1998 in New Delhi when the Press Information Bureau (PIB) informed that Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will address the media. There was no immediate provocation, it appeared. Will it be related to the usual political issues? As I covered science and politics for BusinessLine , sheer curiosity led me to the event. The rest is history.

Brajesh Mishra, the all-powerful National Security Adviser and Vajpayee’s man Friday gave some details about India’s nuclear programme at 7, Race Course Road. Then arrived the PM himself, and broke the biggest news — India had conducted nuclear tests, including testing a thermonuclear device (equivalent to a hydrogen bomb).

The entire media was taken aback. Nobody had an inkling, including the US and the other nuclear powers. On May 11, 1998, India announced itself with a bang that it had become a nuclear power State.

Turning point

It was a defining moment for both the country and Vajpayee, who was leading a precarious coalition under the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). If the world nations had any doubts after Pokhran-1 (Buddha Smiling project) of 1974, carried out by Indira Gandhi, they were to be largely answered in 1998.

The tests of May 11 and 13, 1998, foxed the US and established Vajpayee’s strength as a leader who could take tough decisions even in a coalition. His predecessor, PV Narasimha Rao, had all but come close to conducting the nuclear tests, but was reportedly stopped at the last minute, succumbing to US pressure.

For a science correspondent, who was disappointed to have been left out of a two-day meeting of a Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Bengaluru, the Pokhran news turned out to be amongst the most memorable.

When Murli Manohar Joshi, Minister for Science and Technology, stopped the proceedings at the Bengaluru meeting and announced the Pokhran blasts, all the Delhi-based science journalists present there had a jolt. Some called up and said they were lost as all action was in the national capital. Those were the pre-Google days with hardly any mobile phones. BusineesLine lead page one with the Pokran report.

The key men behind the triumph of ‘Operation Shakti’ were APJ Abdul Kalam, the then chief of DRDO; R Chidambaram, Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission; K Santhanam, Mission Director, and Anil Kakodkar, Director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).

‘Justified?’

On May 18, the Sunday after the nuclear tests, a news conference was organised with national and international media in attendance at the Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi. A foreign correspondent asked Kalam if it was justifiable that India — a poor nation struggling to feed its millions, and lacking sanitation — should indulge in this kind of adventurism? Kalam responded: “India has always been a nation under attack in its long history, surrounded by hostile neighbours, and its requiresa strong deterrence. In contrast, the US has never been attacked and had had the least threat, but possesses the highest number of nuclear weapons. Was it justified?”

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