India's "Strategic Enclave": Civilian Scientists and Military Technologies

The Indian security complex has become a diversified set of establishments, which have grown up around two models. The first model is based on a top-down system, less suited to technological innovation and development, which concentrates on licensed production and production for the civilian market. The second model is a flexible, project-oriented system, which has been able to produce both a nuclear device and ballistic missiles. This article examines some important factors driving the latter model, which is responsible for India's growing strategic capability. The focus is on the efforts of a civilian scientific elite, which entered the security sector due to its control of dual-use high technologies and the failure to fulfill its original mandate of cheap nuclear power.