The oddest aspect of Washington's action is that it affects only government-aided projects. If the idea is to protect defence secrets, this would appear to be the least intelligent way of going about it. This year, the US government increased the quota of information technology workers from India to deal with shortages in skilled manpower. True, some of these Indians headed for the US will only be scripting video games in Silicon Valley. But surely a certain number of them will be working for Rockwell or Marconi. In other words, they will be working in the same facilities as people who make missile guidance systems or communications scramblers. And anyone working on software for the banking industry will be privy to encryptiontechniques which are classified as defence secrets and cannot be exported to India. Will Washington then start throwing these technologists out? Or will it demurely accede to the demands of the industry, as it did to the agricultural lobby in the case of economic sanctions? Obviously, it will backpedal wildly. The crackdown on scientists is not to be taken seriously. It is just the US government playing to the gallery, parading its very questionable values in a highly visible but completely irrelevant manner.

Washington should apply what it is pleased to call its collective mind to the nuclear issue. It should try to come to terms with India's position, not work at cross-purposes with its own emissaries. The expulsion of the Indian scientists comes scant days after Strobe Talbott and Jaswant Singh started a process of discussion that held forth some promise. Especially, the US should take care to avoid forms of action that enjoy no relevance or dignity in the present day, though they may have beenacceptable in the past. The decision to expel Indian scientists is so utterly puerile that it does not even attract censure. Only derision would be a proper response to it.