Abstract
Non-state actors have already crossed the chemical weapons threshold. The 1995 Tokyo sarin attack proved the same. Radiological and nuclear material has also proven to be vulnerable to diversion outside state control; India’s own 2010 Mayapuri incident proves this to be true. This article looks at India’s capability to counter CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear) exigencies posed by non-state actors and argues that the real vulnerability is not a shortage of capability. It is the absence of a system that reliably brings that capability together when it is actually needed. India’s disaster management architecture, built under the Disaster Management Act, 2005, does not even name CBRN as a category in its founding legislation. The National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) and the Armed Forces each bring real and growing capabilities; however, they sit fragmented across separate chains of command, with no standing protocol linking them together. It concludes that closing India’s CBRN preparedness gap needs a dedicated CBRN doctrine, a standing civil-military protocol, and CBRN preparedness pushed down to the state and district level.
