India and the nuclear test ban

India has decided to block the draft of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty as presented on June 28, 1996. The step was taken after the nuclear weapon states refused to remove India from the list of countries that have research and power reactors, all of whom must accede to the treaty before the treaty enters into force. This despite India's announcement earlier that it would not accede to the treaty in its present form. The situation is, indeed, peculiar. On the one hand it exemplifies the brutal display of power of the nuclear haves, on the other, it is a blatant attack on sovereignity of an independent country.

It is ironical that having been proponent of the treaty as early as 1954 and an active supporter of the measure all through, India has been forced to block it eventually. This book is an attempt to understand (a) the evolution of the test ban negotiating process, and (b) India's attitude to different aspects of the process from 1950s to the current phase.
Beginning with historical perspectives which form the background, the current round of negotiations have been traced in detail. The attitudes of the nuclear-weapon states, their changing stances, in particular, have also been looked into. Also analysed are the various drafts of the treaty which eventually led to the draft of June 28, 1996 now being described as "final". Apart from tracing the evolution of India's stand in the last four decades, the book has endeavoured to analyse India's attempts to convert the treaty into a disarmament measure-global elimination of weapons in a time-bound framework.