Nuclear power has long occupied a singular and somewhat uneasy place in Bharat’s public imagination. It has been viewed, often with pride, as proof of scientific achievement and strategic resolve, yet governed with a restraint that reflected a deeper discomfort with the diffusion of risk.
Unlike other sources of energy, it was never treated as merely developmental. It was seen as elemental, consequential, and, therefore, exceptional—warranting a degree of separation from the ordinary rhythms of industry and enterprise. Over time, this instinct translated into a model where the state was not only regulator and guarantor, but also the exclusive custodian of nuclear power. Global nuclear accidents sharpened domestic anxieties. The legal response was to concentrate responsibility and liability within the state, premised on the belief that reassurance could come only through control. Caution, thus, became convention, and convention hardened into policy, leaving nuclear energy governed more by inherited apprehension than by institutional capability.
It is against this backdrop that the SHANTI Act must be understood. It is neither an abrupt departure nor a dilution of safeguards, but a measured acknowledgement that Bharat’s regulatory architecture has matured. The Act reflects confidence in oversight mechanisms that are now capable of enforcing accountability across a wider institutional landscape, allowing responsibility to be shared without being weakened. For the nuclear sector, this recalibration carries tangible consequences. A unified and contemporary legal framework provides long-awaited clarity, removing uncertainties that had deterred investment and collaboration, and enabling indigenous industry to participate meaningfully across design, construction, operation and innovation. Emerging technologies, such as small modular reactors and advanced systems, find space within a structure that encourages research, domestic manufacturing and technological partnerships.
The implications for Bharat’s youth are equally significant. A sector once perceived as distant and inaccessible opens itself to engineers, researchers, safety professionals and entrepreneurs, creating pathways for skilled employment and specialised expertise. Nuclear energy, in this context, becomes not only a strategic asset but also a domain of aspiration and long-term opportunity. For a country preparing its demographic dividend for the decades ahead, the creation of high-skill, future-oriented employment is not incidental but central to its developmental trajectory.
At its core, this reform is anchored in national security, as a robust civil nuclear ecosystem strengthens energy security, reduces external dependence and reinforces strategic autonomy in an increasingly uncertain global environment. By enabling capacity expansion through accountable participation rather than isolation, Bharat secures its developmental needs while retaining sovereign control. This evolution aligns closely with the broader governance vision articulated over the past decade under the leadership of Narendra Modi, where reform has consistently been guided by confidence in institutional capability. Across sectors, the emphasis has been on replacing inherited caution with empowered systems, and centralised control with accountable participation. The SHANTI Act reflects this philosophy in one of the most sensitive and consequential domains of public policy.
As Bharat advances towards the goal of Viksit Bharat 2047, the true measure of development will lie not merely in ambition, but in the discipline with which power is governed. By reforming the governance of nuclear energy, Bharat aligns national security, industrial growth and opportunity for its youth within a single, coherent vision, signalling its readiness to plan for the long term and to convert institutional strength into national capacity.
As Krishna observes in the Gita:
(There is no wisdom for the unsteady; and for the uncontrolled, there is no contemplation. And for one who does not contemplate, there is no peace. How can there be happiness for one without peace?)
Governance—rooted in discipline—produces clarity of thought and action. Such clarity strengthens regulation, steadies institutions and, in time, gives rise to SHANTI, the kind of peace that underwrites strength rather than diminishes it.
Bansuri Swaraj is the Lok Sabha member from New Delhi.