Climate card won’t help India get NSG membership

At the COP26 meeting in Glasgow this week, India hinted that it would be able to meet its climate commitments better if it was allowed membership of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). It was a clever diplomatic ploy. Though India’s nuclear challenges go beyond the climate crisis.

India is at present a member of three of the four global non-proliferation regimes — Wassenaar Arrangement, Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) and Australia Group. The fourth one, the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), however, continues to elude India, largely because of one country, China, whose opposition is couched in non-proliferation language.

China has also asked for Pakistan to be granted membership along with India, to rob India of the “special” tag that came with the NSG waiver to the India-US nuclear deal back in 2008. China acceded to that waiver, kicking and screaming, and has since nursed that diplomatic humiliation — Chinese diplomats walked out of that last meeting of the NSG in Vienna in September 2008, and were sent back after a midnight phone call from Washington.