Countdown In South Asia: The Interviews

On the fourth anniversary of the 1998 Pokhran tests: unabdridged notes and transcriptions from a series of interviews by Amitav Ghosh that went on to become the seminal book Countdown.

Amitav Ghosh

Updated on: 11 May 2002 12:00 am

From Amitavghosh.com:

Prompted by the military escalation of the last few weeks, I have looked again at my notes andtranscriptions for Countdown– my 1998 New Yorker article on the nuclear situation in South Asia (later published as a book by Ravi Dayal).

Finding much in them that is still relevant, in one way or another, I have decided to post them on this site.Unfortunately I have not had the time to properly edit the transcripts, so they are posted here withoutbenefit of corrections. The interviews were all conducted in August 1998. They are arranged in the followingorder:

1. Asma Jahangir (lawyerand human rights activist, Lahore).

2. K. Subrahmanyam (defenceand foreign policy expert; New Delhi).

3. Praful Bidwai(journalist and nuclear expert; New Delhi, 1998).

4. Chandan Mitra(editor, The Pioneer, New Delhi).

5. V.P.Malik (then Chief ofArmy Staff).

6. George Fernandes(India’s Defence Minister, New Delhi, August)

7. Kanti Bajpai (Professorof Internation Relations, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi).

(Please click here for exclusiveexcerpts from Countdown. For more writings by and on Amitav Ghosh, please visit his website, amitavghosh.com)