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’The Manmohan Agenda’ in crisis

The deal is integral to the larger "Manmohan Singh agenda" to push India Rightwards socially, economically and politically. UPA leaders didn't back the deal out of respect for Dr. Singh's (lightweight) stature and political judgment, or out of their faith in nuclear energy - with its appallingly poor performance in India and its at-best-dubious potential contribution to energy security.
JUST as it seemed headed for completion, the India-United States nuclear deal has run into big trouble. Indian officials had thought the US-drafted motion to get a waiver for India from the Nuclear Suppliers' Group's nuclear trade rules would "sail through."
Getting consensus on it would be as smooth as "a knife going through butter." A handful of dissenting member-states would express reservations. Soon thereafter, Germany, the NSG chair, would announce a "consensus."
The US Congress would ratify the deal by September. India would have its Nuclear Nirvana.
Yet, more than 20 of the NSG’s 45 members expressed reservations. A vocal bloc led by Austria, New Zealand and Ireland proposed more than 50 amendments to bring the waiver in line with the Group's overwhelming nonproliferation objective. The NSG, which works by consensus, reached no decision. The dissenters won the day.
What was meant to be the crowning of India’s arrival on the world stage is now being described as a setback, even "debacle." Indian officials say the US didn't lobby the dissenting states hard enough, or that it sabotaged the NSG proceedings.
There are two problems with this proposition. One, it sits ill with the fact that the US initiated the deal. It prepared the ground in early 2005 by offering to "help India become aWorld Power."
India essentially reacted, but also drove a hard bargain knowing that Washington saw the deal as the key to bringing New Delhi into its strategic orbit and containing China. The US wouldn't want to sabotage the deal at this stage after having staked so much on it. India was involved in negotiating every phrase in the resolutions before the IAEA and NSG.
It was naive, even foolhardy, for New Delhi to think that many NSG states, which only have a limited interest in partnering India, would meekly go along with Washington. In fact, it's India that proved unreasonably inflexible.
Second, India underrated the opposition, especially from states like New Zealand and Austria which take nuclear non-proliferation sincerely -- New Zealand to the point of barring US warships because Washington won't say if they carry nuclear warheads.
India's credibility in matters nuclear has taken a beating since 1998 when it blasted its way into the Nuclear Club after having championed disarmament for 50 years, and embraced the "repugnant" doctrine of nuclear deterrence.
It's not good enough for India to offer a unilateral testing moratorium. Countries like Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Austria and New Zealand want a more robust commitment: no nuclear commerce with the world if India tests again.
These countries may yet drop or dilute their conditions. But they will have be coerced through US arm-twisting, or cajoled through lucrative contracts from "emerging economic giant" India. But some of them don't have a big stake in Indian contracts. Some may resist US pressure too.
We don't know if the dissenters will stand up in the NSG, though that’s highly likely. But the conditions they propose are potential deal-breakers: periodic review of India's compliance with nonproliferation commitments; exclusion of uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing technologies from exports; and most important, end to nuclear trade if India conducts a test.
India insists on a "clean and unconditional" waiver, with only "cosmetic" changes in the US draft. So unless the conditions vanish, India must sign a bad deal. Qr, India loses the deal altogether in the Bush administration's term.
If Barack Obama becomes the next US president, he won't make generous deal-related concessions. During the Hyde Act debate, he moved an amendment calling for fuel stocks for the normal operation of Indian reactors, not for a "strategic fuel reserve." Even under a Republican administration, the deal won't get terms as favourable as the present ones.
If India signs a deal violating Dr. Manmohan Singh's commitments to Parliament, the entire opposition will attack him. Even the United Progressive Alliance will find it hard to counter the charge that he has "sold out."
Many UPA allies and Congressmen could turn against Dr. Singh for misleading them into believing the US would take care of the NSG, and there'd be no political price to pay for the deal — beyond losing the Left's support and allying with the sleazy Samajwadi Party.
The Congress-UPA's heart was never in the deal. It was thrust upon them by Dr. Singh's insistence on leaving a "legacy" of a decisive pro-US strategic policy turn, much like his neo-liberal paradigm shift of 1991.
The deal is integral to the larger "Manmohan Singh agenda" to push India Rightwards socially, economically and politically.
UPA leaders didn’t back the
deal out of respect for Dr. Singh's (lightweight) stature and political judgment, or out of their faith in nuclear energy — with its appallingly poor performance in India and its at-best-dubious potential contribution to energy security.
They did so because Ms. Sonia Gandhi, who was reluctant to break with the Left, backed the deal after her son put his weight’ behind it.
Congressmen know they're paying a heavy price for taking the SP's support, including inviting "cash-for-votes" charges, rewriting petroleum, telecom and captive coal-mines policies to favour business groups, and sacrificing their party's interests in Uttar Pradesh, where the Congress's social base and rank-and-file are out-of-sync with, even terrified of, theSP.
However, the cost meter won't stop there. If the UPA government signs the nuclear deal with onerous conditions, its credibility will be destroyed. If the deal collapses, the UPA will become the nation's laughingstock.
All this is happening amidst runaway crises in the Kashmir Valley and Jammu, eruption of communal violence in Orissa, and the Home Ministry’s extraordinary ineptitude in dealing with terrorist attacks, for which it variously but unconvincingly blames SIMI, Gujarati youth, Bangladeshbased "modules" and ISI-sponsored outfits.
Under the UPA, governance is faltering. Yet it's ducking democratic accountability’ by uncon-scionably postponing Parliament's monsoon session. Burdened with Dr. Singh's legacy obsession, the UPA has very' little time left to correct course. PraW B d*a is an eminent Indan co^jmntst