The passage of the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill, 2025, by the Lok Sabha on December 17 marks a decisive inflexion point in India's energy policy. While many feel that it brings India closer to enacting the most consequential reform of its civil nuclear framework since 2010, there has been criticism, too.

The concerns raised about the SHANTI Bill deserve to be taken seriously. Nuclear energy is not an ordinary sector. It deals with high-consequence risks, demands exceptional safety standards, and requires public trust to function. In that sense, scepticism is not only legitimate but necessary. However, acknowledging valid anxieties should not lead us to dismiss a reform that addresses long-standing structural failures in India's nuclear programme and is critical for the country's future growth, energy security, and climate commitments.

Over the course of more than twenty-five years of working on international economic and regulatory issues at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, I have seen how deeply risk-sensitive sectors are regulated when nations are serious about both safety and scale. The central question is never whether risk can be eliminated entirely; it is whether institutions are designed to manage risk credibly and transparently.

The central question before India today is not whether nuclear energy is entirely risk-free - it can never be, just like air travel or train travel. The real question is whether India is better served by a tightly regulated, modernised, investible nuclear framework or by continuing with a system that has stalled capacity expansion, deterred technology inflows, and left India increasingly dependent on fossil fuels.

On that question, the SHANTI Bill represents progress, not peril.

One of the strongest criticisms has been that allowing private sector participation amounts to handing over "dangerous technology" to profit-seeking........

© NDTV