THE Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh has plunged the Congress party and the United Progressive Alliance into a grave crisis by staking his personal reputation and India’s ‘national prestige’ on pushing through the United States-India nuclear cooperation deal just when the deadline for completing it is about to close. His mulish insistence on approaching the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna for approving the inspections (safeguards) agreement India signed with the Agency’s secretariat is certain to jeopardise the survival of the present governing arrangement, which is dependent on the Left’s support.
Yet, because the UPA lacks the courage to face an early national election, it’s trying to negotiate a shady, opportunist and deplorable political deal with the Samajwadi Party merely to keep its government afloat despite the withdrawal of support by the Left parties’ 59 Lok Sabha MPs, which gave the government 14 more MPs than the halfway mark of 272.
A charade is in progress for manufacturing a ‘factual’ basis for winning the SP’s support for the deal: through a ‘briefing’ by the National Security Adviser, followed by a statement by the PMO, and then the SP’s ‘consultations’ with Dr A P J Abdul Kalam, who has long backed the agreement. It’s likely that the UPA will try to stitch together a shaky and unconvincing majority for the UPA (227 MPs) by recruiting other ‘defector parties’ like Mr Ajit Singh’s Rashtriya Lok Dal and Mr H D Deve Gowda’s Janata Dal (Secular), each with 3 MPs, in addition to the SP’s 39 MPs.
Even if this new sleazy arrangement survives, it’s unlikely to ensure that the nuclear deal will be concluded before the Bush administration’s term ends. As we see below, the deal is likely to run into obstacles in the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, and the US Congress. The UPA could end up losing both credibility and the deal.
This will further damage the UPA’s chances of emerging as a front-runner in the next election amidst adverse circumstances, including rising inflation, now running at above 11 per cent, and a growing threat from the now-resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party. The UPA’s latest move could prove suicidal and pave the way for the BJP to make a bid for power.
Dr Singh never had, and still lacks, a democratic mandate to sign and complete the controversial nuclear deal, which will cause a major or radical shift in India’s nuclear, strategic and foreign policy postures. Last November, the Left agreed to give the government ‘an honourable exit’ by allowing it to hold talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency secretariat. But the UPA-Left joint committee on the deal agreed that the talks’ outcome ‘would be presented to the committee for its consideration before it finalises its findings’, and the next steps are taken.
However, the government now insists that it be allowed to go to the Board regardless of the committee’s findings. Dr Singh’s unreasonable insistence on pushing the deal through has dismayed Congressmen not least because he is a political lightweight and a technocrat, who has never won a popular election and has no long-term stake in the future of the Congress. He is bent on finalising the deal partly because of US pressure and largely because he believes that it will leave a great legacy – a strategic partnership or alliance with the US – comparable to the neo liberal economic shift, which he executed in 1991.
A majority of Congress leaders are uncomfortable or unhappy with Dr Singh’s stance. Regrettably, they seem to have fallen in line with it, because of the support it has apparently received from Congress president, Ms Sonia Gandhi. Unless she corrects course at the last moment by preventing the Congress from embracing the SP –as one must hope she does – Ms Gandhi will have committed a grave error of judgment.
Allowing the Congress-UPA to ally with the SP doesn’t involve just a tactical shift away from the Left. It means strategically moving away from a reliable, respectable and principled force (the Left), which is a bulwark against Hindu communalism, to a party, which is compromised with the Sangh Parivar, besides being steeped in opportunism and outright criminality. SP leaders have cut deals with shady business groups such as Sahara, and are involved in odious land transactions and tax scams, exemplified by the Sahara Shehar case.
The SP did take an anti-communal stance in the 1990s. But in recent years it has covertly hobnobbed with the Sangh Parivar partly because of its fear of the Bahujan Samaj Party. When in power in Uttar Pradesh until a year ago, the SP ensured that a legal notification needed to bring Mr L K Advani to trial in the Babri demolition case would not be issued. It appointed Sangh supporters to high positions, donated crores to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and lavished hospitality on the BJP’s national council members, treating them as state guests in winter 2006. The SP will extract a high price for lending support to the UPA, including withdrawal of CBI investigations, dropping of ministers, and shelving the women’s reservation Bill. This will further erode the UPA’s credibility and could prove the kiss of death for it
Yet, under Dr Singh’s goading, the UPA is embarking on this terrible gamble, when it’s not even clear that the nuclear deal can be put through its next complicated steps and completed before the end of 2008. If and when the IAEA Board of Governors endorses the safeguards agreement, the Nuclear Suppliers Group must be persuaded to grant India an unconditional exemption from its tough rules governing nuclear commerce – although India hasn’t signed the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the next crucial step, the US Congress must ratify the 123 bilateral agreement signed with India.
The window of opportunity for completing these steps is fast slamming shut, if it has not closed. Many US policy-makers and -shapers like Mr Obama’s adviser, Mr Anthony Lake and Mr Gary Ackerman believe that it may be already too late to send the deal to the US Congress. They are joined by Mr Ashley Tellis, an architect of the deal, who recently told the ‘Financial Times’ that it’s ‘probably correct’ that the deal is ‘dead’. Similarly, Mr Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association (US), which has closely followed the agreement’s tortuous negotiation, says the deal is somewhere ‘between intensive care and the mortuary’.
The deal is likely to face major hurdles before the US Congress deadline. The greatest of these will be encountered at the NSG, many of whose members will ask questions and demand clarifications as to why a unique exception be made for India to the global nuclear regime.
Indian negotiators hope they can obtain a clear, clean and unconditional exemption from the NSG, and that too in record time. Dr Singh’s supporters argue that the nuclear deal is a ‘litmus test’ for India’s ‘international credibility’ and prestige. But the international community knows that the deal does not enjoy consensual support within India, and that the compulsions of India’s democratic politics are the biggest obstacles to completing it.
Praful Bidwai, a fellow of the Transnational Institute, is a senior Indian journalist, political activist and widely published commentator. He is a co-author (with Achin Vanaik) of New Nukes: India, Pakistan and Global Nuclear Disarmament.
