You cited a recent report byJack Watling and Nick Reynolds, my Royal United Services Institute colleagues (Johnson vows to stop UK exports to India ending up in Russia, 22 April), who rightly cautioned the need to vet British defence exports, specifically to seven countries, including India.
That this is timely, lest dual-use components make their way to Vladimir Putin, merits no reiteration. But I must point out, in a year marking the 75th anniversary of the largest developing democracy, that institutionalised Indian oversight of its domestic armaments suppliers across public and private sectors, and a rules-bound administrative and judicial structure that robustly regulates civilian-military relations, has not only pre-empted individual or corporate drives and ambitions, but revealed an absence of rogue scientists, politicised soldiers and surreptitious sales to date.
Iranians and Libyans got nowhere seeking fissile knowhow from India, which is widely known for abstaining from condemning Moscow at the UN, but not for cancelling a recent Russian order of MiG-29 jets or airlifting 90 tons of medical and humanitarian aid, via Slovakia and Poland, to Ukraine.
Burzine Waghmar
Inaugural visiting India fellow, Royal United Services Institute
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