It is Kaushik Kapisthalam, rather than the critics of the decision to sell Uranium to India, who is missing the point.

We should not be selling Uranium to China, Russia, Pakistan, the US or India. Australia should use its influence on the world stage to salvage what good the Nulear Non-proliferation Treaty is still able to achieve, and not act to further undermine it.

The fact that this Goverenment is prepared to sell Uranium to a nuclear-armed state such as India, further confims (as if any more confirmation is needed in the wake of the Iraq War, the AWB scandal and its determination to continue warming the planet with Australian coal) that it is utterly devoid of morality or any sense of responsibility.

They will sell anything to anybody.

"...an Australian refusal to supply uranium to India using the NPT alibi after Canberra's generous offer to China would be seen ...as an affront to a rising India"

Do we really want to supply uranium to a nation that is so easily "affronted"?

Seriously though, India's failure to sufficiently feed its own children while investing in nuclear weapons and a space programme is an affront to humanity.

Not that it makes much of a difference. The fact that 50% of India's children are already malnourished, combined with uncontrolled population increase, rapid drawing down of its water table, desertification and implications for agriculture of rising oil/fertilizer prices, decreasing phosphate availability and receding Himalayan glaciers mean that India is on a shortcut to starvation, chaos and collapse. They will not be much of a long term market for Australia's uranium.

I applaud Kapisthalam for this brilliant piece.

Daggett:

Sadly it is YOU who is missing the point. What Kapisthalam is saying that when Aus is selling Uranium to the likes of UK and US, it has no reason not to sell to India. Either you sell to all or sell to none if it is a matter of principle. Anything else is hypocrisy.

michael_in_adelaide:

You are a racist. You know not that a large part of India's space programme is used for rural education, irrigation and emergency communication. India's population growth is largely controlled and poverty, malnutrition etc are improving steadily. What you need to answer is why small White nations like France and UK, whose populations are declining and who are no longer global powers, need nuclear weapons. We don't need your patronizing nonsense.

Overall, Kapisthalam has pointed out the clear and present hypcrisy behind Australia's "NPT or else" stand. The NPT itself is a racist treaty that has sought to preserve a failed world order and forced nuclear terror on many nations. Sanctimonious people in the West have sought to lecture thrid-world countries on the dangers of nukes while sitting under a cushy nuclear shield and conducting tests on aboriginal land. Shame on all of them!

Michael.. don't worry.. those malnourished children will have a better diet when their parents find exployment in the DMIC - a 100 billion (Japan is financing 30%) USD corridor from Delhi to Mumbai comprising townships, high-speed freight lines and nine 200 sq km SEZs dedicated to manufacturing, chemicals and engineering, three ports and six airports all powered by light water reactors loaded with Uranium from Australia, Canada, Russia, Niger, Kazakstan...

As an America-based opinion peddler, you have to suspect that Kaushik Kapisthalam would help his cause better if he was a bit more careful with his labels.

Talk of "a chorus of opposition to this decision, from nuclear non-proliferation hard liners to dogmatists who seek to keep India confined to an India-Pakistan box" is not going to win friends among the many Australians who do not share his views.

Much of the opposition is popular. People are understandably cautious about increasing the nuclear capability of countries that are willing to turn it into weaponry. Refusal to sign the NPT may seem justified in India, or in the realist corridors of strategic studies institutes, but not to most people in Australia.

Just like the Iraq invasion, Howard's decision is against the majority opinion, not just shrill latte-sipping elites. Just like that invasion, the majority seem to have made the safer call.

On second thoughts: perhaps his article was intended to inflame, not persuade. If so, it was published in the wrong forum.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6957957.stm

Mr Abe has arrived at the head of a major business delegation, including chief executives of Japanese companies such as Toyota, Mitsubishi, Canon and Hitachi.
Both governments will announce a plan to jointly develop an ambitious manufacturing and freight corridor between Delhi and the financial capital, Mumbai, rather like that between Tokyo and Osaka.
It will include a high-speed railway line, several ports and airports.
But perhaps the most significant aspect of the visit is development of a strategic partnership.
Mr Abe favours an alliance between Japan, Australia, the United States and India, something that is of concern to China.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070820/48/6joyd.html

Government sources confirmed that the US, Japan, Australia and Singapore navies would be conducting war games in the Bay of Bengal, 100 nautical miles west of Andamans and 500 miles east of the Indian shores, during September 4-9. Undaunted by the Left parties' threat to protest against these exercises, the Manmohan Singh Government has given a clear signal to the Indian Navy to go ahead with 15 of its surface combatants including INS Viraat, India's sole aircraft carrier, for the war games.