Wielding the juggernaut - circus over, challenge begins

Now that the nuke deal is nearly initialed on the dotted line, one begins to feel twinges of misapprehension. Have you come across tales of a couple awaiting a baby for years and years, and then when the son turned out to be a blackguard of the first water, wishing they hadn't hoped for his birth. You begin to fathom what I am trying to hint?

There has already been enough passed on as to how the deal is not a bed of roses all the way and has its gray areas by the kilometers. We know the nuclear power shall not be cheap, as we shall be buying technology and raw materials from the wealthy west. We know India's foreign policy shall be under the microscope of the international watchdogs and an atom bomb shall not be born in our arsenals, much to the glee of our pleasant, friendly neighbours.

However, my concern is none of the above real or imagined reasons. My motivation is a purely personal one at the moment where fear for my own skin is the inspiration behind the blog.

Think and project - are we, as a nation, as a people, capable of maintaining nuclear reactors? A nation where municipality taps miss maintenance, roads cave in, bridges fall, trains bang head-on, airforce planes crash and rocket launches fail. A nation where non-issues mar the real crux of the matter all the time, where corruption reigns, where criminal politicos run elections from jail, illiterate housewives rule states, below par candidates on reservation seats try to manage public offices. A nation that fairly bends double under the weighty threats of terror attacks from nearly all its neighbours.

Is such a nation capable of handling several nuclear reactors safely?

Pranab Mukherji mentioned that winning over the trust vote was the easier part of the deal. How right is he, albeit I am taking his words in another sense.

Most probably I am behaving like a gypsy gone crazy and perhaps tomorrow I shall laugh at this web log of mine. But meanwhile, pledge to be exta-careful, India, lest a Chernobyl happens here.