Critical Analysis of India’s Safeguards Agreement INFCIRC/754 with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)

India concluded a fresh safeguards agreement (INFCIRC/754) with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 2009. All aspects of safeguards measures including the items to be safeguarded were deliberated upon, to ensure that India’s safeguards agreement does not result in giving any flexibility to India to use safeguarded items for unsafeguarded activities. The safeguards agreement INFCIRC/754 came with many additional features. Some of them are a result of the IAEA’s efforts to bring uniformity to subsidiary arrangements and structure and format for reporting requirements. Other features reflect India’s readiness to extend the provisions of INFCIRC/754 to previous safeguarded facilities. There have been quite a good number of publications on the contents of INFCIRC/754. An attempt has been made in this article to critically study the text of INFCIRC/754 and analyse and interpret the safeguards provisions therein to assess their functionality, adequacy and effectiveness.