Blast screens India’s woes

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33539, 21 May 1974, Page 13

Blast screens India’s woes

t.V.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) NEW DELHI, May 20. Jubilation over India’s explosion of a nuclear device swept the country today, bolstering the troubled Government of the'Prime Minister (Mrs Gandhi) and overshadowing the nation’s economic woes.

"We mav be hungry,” ran a ’vpical comment. "But now at least we’re someone to be reckoned with.” The Defence Minister (Mr Jagiivan Ram) said that India would never use its new-found power for military purposes.- “Our objective" is to use our knowledge in nuclear science only for peaceful purposes,” he said. ■‘Our armed forces know

this is not for their use. I think any Government will have to think many times before it reverses our decision.”

India set off the 10 to 15 kiloton nuclear blast (equal to 10,000 to 15,000 tons of T.N.T.) on Saturday 300 feet below the desert in western Rajasthan state. The explosion gained new domestic stature for Mrs Gandhi, whose administration has been rocked by devastating economic problems and a series of labour protests.

About 30 per cent of India’s 580 m people live below the subsistence level. About 75 per cent of recent university graduates are unemployed. Food consun,ption has dropped in spite of an annual rise in po n ’i!ation of 13m people. The nuclear test was

hailed by politicians from the extreme Left to the extreme Right, with only one significant exception — the Communists, who warned Mrs Gandhi against trying to hide economic troubles under the “smokescreen of a nuclear explosion”, and called for India’s atomic power to be used “only for peaceful purposes.” Leaders of the militant Right-wing Jana Sangh, the most powerful political group after Mrs Gandhi’s Left-wing Congress Party, said the blast was “the most heartening news in recent years.” The “Hindustan Times” said the nuclear test proved “India has the talent, the resources and the infrastructure that makes for high achievement capability.” Hr* Defence Minister said

India had decided to develop its own nuclear device three years ago, but the possibility of Pakistan’s obtaining atomic weapons had had nothing to do with it. “Our knowledge in nuclear science has raised our status not only in South-East Asia, but in the whole world,” he said.

In Lahore, the Prime Minister of Pakistan (Mr Bhutto) said Pakistan would never succumb to "nuclear blackmail” by India.

Mr Bhutto said Pakistan would not surrender its rights or be deflected from its policies by India’s nuclear status.

He said nuclear weapons could be used as a means of coercion against non-nuclear countries, and that their threat was as lethal politically as their actual use could be devastating physically.