Wheeling ‘N’ dealing - Matter Of National Security And Sovereignty, Not Inter-Party Politicking

Sumer Kaul
The Statesman, 24 November

What the dickens is happening on the nuclear deal? Is it on or off? Or neither? Or both? Some day in the near future we will know. Right now, given the pirouetting party politics, it is impossible to say.
Actually, pirouette is not the right word. Considering that there is more swing than spin on view, trapeze may be a better description. First the Left swung into action and the Manmohan Singh government swerved from its position. Now the Left has swerved from its position and the government has swung into action!

To change the metaphor, after being in intensive care of the government, the deal suffered a seemingly terminal shock, courtesy the Left, and was duly shifted to the morgue, causing its principal protagonist to philosophize about life after death, etc. Then, last week, it was resuscitated, courtesy the same Left, and was promptly shifted to the post-trauma recovery room.

‘N’ for Nandigram

With a view quickly to restore it to good health, the government has dispatched post-haste AEA chief Dr Kakodkar and team to Vienna to negotiate on India-specific safeguards, so-called, with the IAEA. The first of a three-stage follow-up to operationalise the Indo-US deal (other two being a formal “yes” by the Nuclear Suppliers Group and approval by the American Congress), it was this very step that the Left had vetoed just last month.

To change the metaphor once again (forgive me, but then Indian politics itself is a bizarre mosaic of metaphors), what prompted Karat and company to change the red signal? True, they have as yet changed it only to amber; they say they will examine the agreement with the IAEA before deciding whether to make it green or go back to red. Needless to say, they are at liberty to do and undo their acts but people at large certainly want to know what happened in the span of a month to cause the Left to abandon its earlier position.

Could it be a different N-deal ~ N for Nandigram, the bruised and battered area in West Bengal that easily qualifies as the ideologically licentious state CPI-M’s crowning disgrace? The BJP thinks so. There are others too who believe that the Left concession on the IAEA negotiations has to do with the fear that the Centre may break its intriguing restraint and come out with an appropriately adverse reaction, if not also some action, on Nandigram. Although opportunistic trade-off are now a staple of Indian politics, particularly the politics of coalition dharma, the N-deal for N-deal allegation may not be true, or wholly true.

Buying time appears to be as likely a reason for the Left's semi-somersault on Vienna: Time for its ruling formation in West Bengal, time for the UPA government and time for the deal operationalisation time-table to elapse. This impression is strengthened by the fact that even after agreeing to the IAEA talks, the Left has reiterated its opposition to the 123 Agreement and the Hyde Act. An unnamed “senior Left source” has been quoted as saying that in case the safeguards agreement is signed, “the government will be on autopilot”, adding for good measure, “we will not allow the government to go to the NSG”.
If this is the case Mr Karat, why did you retreat on the question of approaching the IAEA? And if, on its part, the Manmohan Singh government knows the Left’s post-Vienna mind, and it cannot but know, why is it going through the motions? Given the Bush administration’s deadline, surely the Left’s okay to the safeguards parleys cannot safeguard the UPA’s full term. In the event, what is the frantic Kakodkar activity all about?

Does it have something to do with the government’s alleged wooing of the also anti-deal BJP as an alternative back-up for its survival in office? One can of course never tell what tidings ~ and turnabouts ~ tomorrow may bring! But as of today, the BJP says it won’t budge. Advani said the same to the visiting Henry Kissinger.

That brings us to the strange and rather disagreeable happenings between the Left’s hundred per cent unconditional “no” last month and its thirty-three per cent conditional “yes” last week. While the first hurt the government and the Prime Minister in particular, the second has the potential to deeply dismay the keen-to-profit NSG and particularly the Washingtonian co-architect of the deal and his overeager nuclear tradesmen.

Involved in seeing the deal through are high-pedestal personal prestige (on both sides) and immense corporate profits. The GoI has expended megabucks on lobbying for the deal in the US Congress (plus quite some “small change” on printing quintals of pro-deal literature). Big money and big effort to boot; among other things, the protagonists stringed together a group of retired high-ranking civil and military functionaries to canvas support for the deal through an open epistle to members of Parliament ~ obviously as a counterblast to a similar move by anti-deal nuclear scientists. Difficult to say what effect, if any, these missives have had on the netalog (we may come to know during the impending debate on the issue), but such activity has rarely been seen before.

Nor can one recall a precedent for what the Bush administration did and is doing to push the deal in India. Even as the under secretary of state, the overtalking Nicholas Burns has been burning the proverbial midnight oil to virtually admonish India to proceed with the deal and do it within the prescribed timeframe, the US ambassador has reportedly been meeting with the political naysayers in a bid to bring them in line.
In this game of overt meddling in India’s political affairs, the man who stole the limelight was Henry Kissinger. Claiming that his visit had nothing to do with the deal, he nevertheless made it a point to tell us how good the deal is for us, throwing in the “friendly” warning that if it gets nixed now, it will not be easy to salvage it. So we had better quickly go ahead with it!

Nobody can accuse him of any impropriety. He holds no official position and is free to visit a free country and meet people and air his views. But one is surprised that some leading politicians of both the Right and the Left let him try to brainwash them about the deal and, worse, feel elated that he chose to meet them.

To the morgue

This Machiavellian former US Secretary of State (under a tricky dick President), the secret bombardier-in-chief of Cambodia, the man who made no (diplomatic) bones about being anti-India, called us bastards and our then Prime Minister a bitch, and sent the US nuclear warship to the Bay of Bengal during the Bangladesh war ~ this man should have been treated as a persona non grata, certainly not as “an honoured dignitary”, as one major politician beamingly called him after their meeting.

Questionable as all this activity on the part of the Bush regime and our hospitality to the interference are, we shall let it pass in the confident hope that the UPA-USA pressure blitz will not alter the stand of the political (as well as non-political) opponents of the deal. Messrs Karat and Advani ~ and the merrily fence-sitting leaders of other parties ~ must realise that the deal is not a party quarrel; it is an issue of the utmost national import.

Whatever its dubious plusses, it has huge minus points for India’s security and sovereignty. It must be sent to the morgue.

The author is a veteran columnist and former editor