You have to take the step to fulfill his wishes about educating the public.
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Quote:The 1960s were a tumultous decade for India.
- 1960 China border transgressions
- 1962 Goa Operation Vijay
- 1962 Chinese agression. Limited war below the threshold of all out war & Cuban Missile Crisis. Not anticipated by Indian establishment.
- 1963 US-UK military aid with "ropes" not just strings
- 1963 Death of JLN
- 1964 Chinese Nuke Test
- 1965 Indo-Pak wars Three things:
- Rann of Kutch perfidy. UK pressure to settle dispute in TSP favor
- TSP initiated Operation Gibraltar followed by Operation Grand Slam.
- Failure of Indian policy makers to discern TSP war fighting reserve depletion. Assesment failure
-1966 Death of Lal Bahadur Shastri and Homi Bhaba in same month
- 1967-69 Succession war in Indian political leadership. Syndicate wars
- 1967 Failure of agriculture crops and devaluation of Indian rupee
- 1968 Repeated quest for nuke umbrella by India and spurned by West despite having the most imminent threat from PRC. PRC already showed how it wasn't reluctant to fight a nuke power(SU) in the Ussuri river clashes. US and SU were in proxy fights and never in direct fight. So PRC was not the same as Cold War adversaries.
- 1968 NPT in effect freezing India's option out of legitimate action
KS formed his world view in these tumultous years and he was clear in his vision of where India was despite all the mess that was happening around him like the protogonist of Rudyard Kipling's poem "IF".
Truly it is said "Vision is seeing beyond what is now to what will be."
Its that vision, which others did not share or understand, that clarified things for him. It helped he wasn't a dogmatic Nimrod pushing his knowldege on lesser beings. But listened and countered the arguments logically. From those who knew him personally what comes out is his encyclopediac knowledge of the subject and the differnt points of view and the fallacies on those views. Recall Kautilya's vast knowldege of politicial organization and the deficiencies.
As you can see the nuke issue was important to restore legitimacy as a first rank power. So long as nukes are there: You need test to show you have it (1974 & 1998). Next you have to be accepted as one by the others who have it (IUCNA). Whether India builds power plants or not it is now a legitimate nuke power and is accepted as such by the existing nuke powers. That is the power of the deal. He was clear on this and thus his support for it.
Next you see one has to have political stability and that is dependent on economic growth for no external power on earth, despite any grand strategy, can take apart India, once it has nukes in the hands of the military. In 1960s there were two major attempts to do this 1962 Chinese and the TSP double ops in 1965.
Afte the IUCNA deal its important to understand the next century is about the resource is information and knowledge. Knowledge after processing becomes information.
For this one needs IQ. By 2030 India will have 230M people with IQ >110. That is a population equal to the current population of US! In order to capitalise this, Indians have to believe in themselves and to do that they have to be well off. Recall AlBeruni's gripe about Indians! Hence his emphasis on economic growth.
The 1960s were a great decade for they shaped the world view of his two great helpers: KS Sunderji and AP Kalam who later rose to great heights.
KSS shaped the armed forces doctrine to think in these terms. APK delivered the wherewithal.
Some people fault KS for not writing books like Kenneth Walsh or other doctrinaires. He was a realist practioner and not a detached scholar. So no books of that genre.
There is a quote from Kautilya which to paraphrase says that "Ministers (Officials) who have to implement policies will be the most accurate in their assessments"*. He was verily true to that aphorism.
*Will get the exact one for nit pickers.