Nuclear uncommitments...

This last week, one of the world's big stories was the Washington DC nuclear security summit. Everyone agreed that nuclear terrorism would be a bad thing, although as time passes, the line between "terrorism" and "extra-governmental movement" seems increasingly blurred.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest stories in India was the sudden discovery of eight bunches of radioactive material in a metal scrap shop and warehouse in West Delhi. Two workers in the scrap shop discovered the highly radioactive material when they touched it. They developed severe skin lesions and burns. Doctors at the hospital recognized the signs of radiation poisoning.

The radioactive material apparently lay in the warehouse for four days before authorities noticed it, and that too only because of these ghastly injuries. The total number of exposure victims is now at 7, one of whom has died.

How did this happen? There are two common theories as to where the radioactive waste came from. Radioactive material is often mistaken for and mixed up in scrap metal as nuclear reactors and old ships are broken apart and sold off in pieces. This is why most countries - including India - require that scrap metal be scanned and tracked whenever it crosses international borders. The dealers could have bought dirty scrap from a country like China, and the supplier could have bribed customs agents to overlook the necessary testing.

On the domestic front, hospitals that use radiotherapy equipment must register it, be subject to annual inspections, and provide specially trained staff. Of course, this doesn't happen. So the material could have come from domestic medical waste.

Authorities are now on a hunt for radioactive material. They've found two more clusters of radioactive material in West Delhi.

The scale of this problem is patently absurd. We had highly dangerous material lying in the open in a very densely populated area and no one knew or cared.

Meanwhile, in Washington DC, Manmohan Singh told President Barack Obama that India will establish a special Nuclear Security Centre.

Juxtaposing these two stories provides a lot of insight into how the Indian state seems to function. On the one hand, grand promises. But on the other, policies that are sometimes hopelessly out of touch with the reality of things on the ground. If India wants to become a safer country, from a nuclear security perspective, it needs to enforce the legislation already on the books (not create vague, probably expensive new projects)

This is exactly what happened with climate change. Under pressure to produce something at Copenhagen, India pushed forward its national solar mission, years before extensive solar power was really a realistic goal for the country. Now we have a situation where the government is rushing to prop up a growing (but still small) industry with massive subsidies in order to enable it to overperform, while continuing to subsidize other forms of non-renewable energy. The government wants manufacturers to produce 20 GW of power from solar by 2020, which is huge, but it wants them to do so with indigenously-produced solar panels, which are often more expensive and less efficient than their Japanese counterparts (at least for now.)

Was the solar mission a good thing? Absolutely. But it will take a lot of time and energy to bring the grand vision into line with realistic objectives. Perhaps that's what policymaking is all about - look at Obama's health care plan. But in the health care case, Obama had a clear agenda that was later revised and watered down to make it politically acceptable. In India's case, policies are vague and too often conceived in the heat of the moment, rather than after years of careful observation and analysis.