Stakeholders in the Indian Strategic Missile Program

GAURAV KAMPANI Stakeholders in the Indian Strategic Missile Program GAURAV KAMPANI Gaurav Kampani is senior research associate with the Proliferation Research and Analysis Program in the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. His research interests include South Asian affairs and the politics of nuclear and missile proliferation. mong all the developing states with aspirations tion of actual weapon systems. Similarly, reverse engineer- for weapons of mass destruction and long-range ing projects with the objective of “competence building” Apower projection capabilities, India has achieved have given way to research and development (R&D) a unique degree of success. Outside the group of the five efforts aimed at building relatively sophisticated ballis- legally accepted nuclear weapon states and Israel, India tic, anti-tank, surface-to-air (SAM), and cruise missiles. perhaps harbors the most sophisticated nuclear weapons From the late 1950s until the end of the 1970s, the nucleus and long-range ballistic missile program in the world. of India’s missile efforts consisted of a handful of organi- India’s ballistic missile program has matured to the extent zations and institutional actors mainly centered on mis- that New Delhi can now deploy short- and medium- sile laboratories and the prime minister’s office (PMO). range nuclear armed ballistic missiles in an operational Thereafter, the nucleus expanded by building powerful mode against Pakistan and China. Four decades of invest- alliances with the armed services, government-owned ment in an extensive nuclear weapons and missile-related public-sector entities, private companies, sections of research, design, development, and manufacturing infra- India’s nuclear and space agencies, and semi-autonomous structure have also made these sectors less vulnerable to universities and research organizations. More significantly, long-term disruption by technology denial regimes. More the missile program has emerged as an icon of modern significantly, India’s sophisticated civilian satellite launch capability makes it one of the few developing states theo- India’s technological achievements. Within the last two retically capable of building an intercontinental ballistic decades, the missile program has also partially transformed missile (ICBM) within this decade. the image of the Defense Research and Development India’s missile program is marked by considerable suc- Organization (DRDO), the Indian government’s primary cesses in the last three decades. Beginning with relatively military R&D agency, from an institution that had a his- simple projects aimed at developing missile subsystems, tory of program failures to one that, in the minds of many, the program has progressed to the limited serial produc- epitomizes organizational and technical excellence. 48 The Nonproliferation Review/Fall-Winter 2003 STAKEHOLDERS IN THE INDIAN STRATEGIC MISSILE PROGRAM South Asia specialists and proliferation analysts use mined strategic goals. As a result, the above models as- three main models to explain nuclear and missile prolif- sume an air of ahistoricity; neither do they account for eration in India. The first approach can be dubbed the the overlap nor do they explain the trade-offs and com- “domestic factors” model. This model attributes nuclear promises among competing ideological, organizational, proliferation in India to domestic factors such as national and national security goals in different historical periods. prestige, great power aspirations, the post-colonial project Equally significant, they fail to account for the shift in of modernity, and the need to exorcise the ghosts of colo- the power and influence among the actors and institu- nialism.1 A variant of the “domestic factors” model is the tions that determine strategic policy in India. As a result, “organizational model.” This model links the prolifera- the existing approaches offer partial explanations of the tion of nuclear weapons and strategic missiles to the role dynamics of India’s missile politics. of the powerful scientific and industrial lobbies within the In contrast to the above models, which attempt to fit Indian government such as the Department of Atomic empirics within existing top-down theoretical frame- Energy (DAE), DRDO, and the Indian Space and Research works, this paper adopts a bottom-up model for analyzing Organization (ISRO). Analysts have dubbed these orga- India’s missile programs. It uses available information in nizations as India’s “strategic enclave” and identified their open-source literature to construct an historical narra- bureaucratic-organizational interests as central to the pro- tive of India’s missile program from the 1960s to the liferation drive in India. 2 A third model, “realism,” dis- present. The narrative is then used as an empirical back- counts the domestic and organizational approaches and drop to identify the key constituents in India’s missile pro- explains India’s nuclear and missile programs in strategic gram. The constituents are described as “stakeholders,” terms, as rational responses to potential nuclear threats denoting the actors, institutions, and entities that have from China and Pakistan.3 ideological, organizational, and financial stakes in the An empirical analysis or programmatic history of missile program. The historical narrative is also used to India’s missile program suggests that each of the above draw the contours of the coalition among the strategic three models represents a partial truth. Each of these mod- missile programs’ principal stakeholders as well as the els can explain certain facets and historical periods of dynamics of its expansion in the past four decades. India’s missile program, but none of the models explains The stakeholders approach to understanding India’s the program in its entirety. In essence, India’s nuclear and missile politics offers three principal advantages over the missile programs are the sum total of domestic, organiza- existing models. First, it does away with the problem of tional, and strategic factors. Further, the nature and goals ahistoricity and establishes a clear correlation between of the missile programs have changed considerably in the stakeholders’ ideological and institutional interests in a past four decades. In the late 1950s, for example, domes- given historical period with specific technological out- tic ideological factors such as self-reliance and the scien- comes. Second, this model offers a more persuasive expla- tific lobby’s organizational interests were the primary nation for the evolutionary shift in the nature of India’s drivers behind the missile programs. Similarly, in the missile programs from their symbolic, technological- 1970s, national prestige, technology demonstration, and demonstration, and prestige-seeking orientation in the the DRDO’s organizational interests remained the key 1960s and 1970s toward more tangible national security determining factors behind India’s missile-related efforts. objectives in the last two decades of the 20th century. However, from the early 1980s onward, strategic factors— Third, by identifying organizational and institutional in- especially perceptions of potential nuclear threats from terests of the principal stakeholders and fleshing out the Pakistan and China—played an increasingly influential medley of narratives and motivations that drive India’s role in determining the direction and pace of India’s stra- missile programs, this model creates a framework on which tegic missile programs. to plot the future direction of India’s missile politics. The existing approaches fail to account for the his- This paper is divided into three sections. The first torical shifts in the nature, direction, and goals of India’s section identifies the key institutional structures, proce- missile programs. Proponents of the domestic and organi- dures, and political culture-related specificities that inform zational approaches discount the role of national security strategic decisionmaking in India. Section two constructs factors in shaping India’s strategic choices. Likewise, the a systematic historical narrative of India’s missile program realists reduce India’s missile programs to a linear tech- from the 1960s to the present. Section three identifies nological progression against a background of predeter- and deconstructs the worldviews, philosophies, and organi- The Nonproliferation Review/Fall-Winter 2003 49 GAURAV KAMPANI zational-institutional interests of the principal stakehold- select members of the cabinet including the defense ers in India’s strategic missile program at both the indi- minister, and the heads of DRDO and the atomic energy vidual and collective levels. The paper concludes by tying establishment; occasional invitees could also include the the analysis together to identify the prevailing and emerg- service chiefs of India’s armed forces.6 However, since the ing trends likely to shape India’s missile program in the advent of the BJP government to power in 1998, strategic short and medium terms. decisionmaking has become more institutionalized through a three-layered national security council.7 Until the 1990s, India’s strategic decisionmaking pro- STRATEGIC DECISIONMAKING IN INDIA cess was also highly fragmented and secretive. Important Post-independence India opted for a federal system of gov- decisions were made on an ad hoc basis by the prime min- ernment. Power and responsibilities are distributed among ister

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