BUSINESS
December 26, 1998 | Associated Press
India's defense minister called for foreign consumer goods to be banned from sale in his country. George Fernandes told a student conference in Bombay that India should import "only those goods needed for its defense and development." In 1977, during a stint as industry minister, Fernandes banned Coca-Cola from the country. In his speech, Fernandes charged that foreign companies control India's soft-drink industry. Coca-Cola and Pepsi products are now sold in India.
NEWS
June 17, 1998 | From Times Wire Reports
India does not intend to build a large nuclear arsenal or create an elaborate command and control system to manage the weapons, Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said in the wake of his country's five underground nuclear tests last month. The United States and other nuclear powers have been attempting to persuade rivals India and Pakistan to end the nuclear tests each of them has conducted recently and refrain from building and deploying nuclear weapons systems.
NEWS
May 14, 1998 | PAUL RICHTER, TIMES STAFF WRITER
The Indian subcontinent has lived under an umbrella of nuclear deterrence for years, yet the threat of a runaway arms race has always lurked near as India and Pakistan have accumulated nuclear material and developed deadly ways to deliver it. India has one of the world's most ambitious missile programs, and far outpaces smaller Pakistan in almost every military category.
NEWS
May 30, 1992 | MARK FINEMAN, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Just after sunrise Friday, as the Indian and U.S. navies staged their first joint military exercises in the Arabian Sea off India's western coast, Indian rocket scientists on the east coast conducted an exercise of a far different sort--the successful test of a ballistic missile capable of striking targets in China, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The long-planned naval exercises were meant to symbolize a new age of cooperation between India and the United States.
NEWS
October 1, 1989
India launched its first locally manufactured submarine, giving its navy and arms industry a major boost and heightening regional fears over its rapid military expansion. Sonia Gandhi, wife of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, pressed the launch button from the yard of the state-owned Mazagon Dock, sending the submarine sliding down its dry dock at Bombay into the Arabian Sea.
NEWS
March 2, 1989
India's government has slashed defense spending and diverted funds to fight hunger and illiteracy and provide housing for the homeless. The unprecedented reduction in defense spending was contained in the government's budget for 1989-90, introduced in Parliament by Finance Minister S. B. Chavan. India will spend $133 million less on defense in the 1989-90 fiscal year compared to the previous year, Chavan said. He pledged to spend $1.