Right decision, wrong reasons

Time To Re-Visit The Entire Gamut Of Indo-US “Strategic Relations”

Sumer Kaul

The Statesman, 20 October

I don't know if it can be called the mother of all climb-downs, but the Manmohan Singh government's retreat from the Indo-US nuclear deal is at once astonishing and welcome. It would have been surprising, and of course sensible, if the very-keen-on-the-pact Prime Minister had stepped back when the mischievous elements in the agreement first came to light. The surprise is so much the more because the somersault comes not only after the government had pursued the deal long and assiduously but had tom-tommed it literally till last week as its great achievement which would bring tremendous benefits to the country.

While Dr Singh maintained throughout that the deal was absolutely and unconditionally in our national interest, his party boss and UPA chief joined the fray just a few days ago and rather impetuously flayed the opponents of the deal as enemies of India's development. Given the stated and unstated reasons for the volte-face, it is obvious that for the ruling crusaders, even as development and national interests are paramount, party and government interests are more paramount!

Curdling uncertainty

Thus, for all practical purposes, at least for now, enemies are friends again, coalition allies are happy ~ and the government lives. In fact, it is the curdling uncertainty about the Congress party’s and its coalitionists’ fate at the hustings should the government have fallen and fresh elections become necessary that proved decisive in changing the Prime Minister’s professedly unchangeable mind on the deal.

So much for strength of convictions! Be that as it may, those who opposed the deal, and for very good reasons, are relieved that the country has been saved from falling into a strategic trap. The Left may not be loud about it but it undoubtedly is in a celebratory mood. Its stock vis-à-vis the UPA government has gone up (as has, for no positive effort of their own, that of some sizeable allies in the coalition). Particularly elated must be CPM’s Prakash Karat for not only bending the government but worsting his within-the-fold detractors, especially Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb (besieged otherwise too by self-created problems) and, in a lesser measure and vague sort of way, the party's retired archbishop, the venerated Jyoti Basu. Primus inter pares as general secretary of the CPM, Karat has gained in stature and may well emerge virtually as primus of the entire Left.

But he and his comrades would be wrong in perceiving the government’s U-turn exclusively as their triumph. It is a victory for a significant segment of public opinion ~ for the scientific community which was among the very first to forcefully and unitedly oppose the deal, for those responsible for long-term security planning who may not have voiced their concern but were unhappy with the conditionalities, and for a range of others who raised their voice against the deal on grounds of both security and sovereignty. The discomfited merchants of the deal would be loath to see it as such but it is, in essence, a victory for national self-belief, self-respect and self-interest

This may smack of blistering patriotism but anyone and everyone who studied the deal carefully and without blinkers had no doubt that while it may have delivered a few benefits to India, these would have been more immediate and very substantially more, and without any fetters whatsoever, for the lip-smacking suppliers of nuclear technology, fuel, reactors, etc, and of course provided critical leeway to the United States to twist our arm, and worse, in matters of energy and military security as well as foreign policy. In other words, the deal was potentially loaded against our national interests, including those of development.

Some people say that while the deal has been put on a back stove the burner has not been switched off. Dr Singh talked of losing a battle to win the war. I don't see this purely as face-saving rhetoric. While other constituents of the ruling coalition may have been neither knowledgeable about nor interested in the deal either way, let us not forget that both the Congress and the principal opposition party, the BJP, are equally in favour of entering and consolidating the closest possible relations with the United States no matter what the costs and hazards .

In fact. I am not sure whether the BJP is happy or unhappy that the nuclear deal has come unstuck (or, for that matter, that a fresh election has been warded off). It is all very well for its leaders to use this opportunity to go hammer and tongs at the “paralysed” government and “the weakest ever” Prime Minister, etc. They are being naïve to believe that people have forgotten the BJP's own record while it was in power; how, for instance, it sought to woo the Americans by sending its foreign minister all over the world to persuade the then US under secretary of state to admit us into their parlour and, as an earnest of its desire, faithfully followed their backroom “advice” on Kashmir and Pakistan, including the embarrassing mega-damp squib grandiosely named Operation Parakram.

Same wave-length

The point is that the leaderships (I am not sure about most of their rank and file) of both the principal parties are ideologically on the same wavelength, be it the economy or foreign policy. Good that the nuclear deal has been aborted and the government stands chastised. But there is much else undesirable that is going apace. This makes it imperative for non-toady sections of the media and concerned academics and professionals and leading public figures as well as the political Left not only not to lower their guard but assert themselves resolutely to wean the powers-that-be from the path of subservience to the Big Brother yonder in Washington.

In fact, now is the time to start a forceful debate on the whole gamut of the so-called strategic relationship with the United States. This should include the accelerating and enlarging military “cooperation”; the on-the-cards massive purchase of military hardware; the IMF-World Bank (read US)-dictated view that emanicipation of the economy lies in its MNCpation; the pathetic belief that in matters one and all the West knows best (what, for Pete’s sake, were US embassy officials doing in that UGC meeting?!); and above all, the no-questions-asked obeisance to the exploitative trinity of globalisation, privatization and marketisation that has created islets of enormous opulence in a sea of deprivation and suffering.

The author is a veteran columnist and former editor