India-US N-deal

Shadow boxing while marking time

The coalition government in India may see advantages in holding early polls, comments Inder Malhotra

  During recent weeks, especially since the start of Parliament’s ongoing Budget session, political Delhi has been abuzz with reports that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had at last made up its mind to push through the Indo-US nuclear deal ‘regardless of the consequences’. In simple language this meant that for the sake of the deal the ruling coalition had decided to risk the Left Front’s withdrawal of support and a fresh general election well ahead of the due date of April next year.
   Yet when President Pratibha Patil delivered her address to a joint sitting of Parliament, all she said was that her government ‘hoped that civilian nuclear cooperation with friendly countries, including the United States, would be possible’. On the other hand, the conclusion of an India-specific nuclear safeguards agreement with the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), considered satisfactory by the Union cabinet, gave a further fillip to the hopes of the controversial deal making headway. While many Indians would want the matter to be clinched during the remaining part of the Bush presidency, the principal spokesman of the Left Front, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Prakash Karat, went on warning the UPA to ‘choose between the deal and the government’. A virtual procession of very-high-level American visitors did its bit to bolster the chances of the deal by reminding their Indian interlocutors that ‘time was fast running out’.
   However, the long-awaited meeting on 17 March of the UPA-Left Front committee on the contentious issue threw a big bucket of cold water on the rising expectations of early completion of the deal. Unable to show the Leftists — who support the UPA government ‘from outside’ — the draft agreement with the IAEA, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee tried hard to assure them that the international agency had taken care of Indian concerns such as those relating to perpetual fuel supply and building up of adequate stocks of fuel. But the Left Front did not buy this claim. It sneered, ‘What is the worth of the IAEA assurances when it is not a supplier of fuel?’ Since then it has indicated that it would send a detailed questionnaire to Mukherjee who heads the Congress side on the joint committee. Most significantly, the Leftists won their point that the committee’s next meeting could not be held before 15 April. No less interestingly, the Congress party’s two other allies on the committee, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar and Railway Minister Laloo Yadav remained silent throughout the 17 March meeting.
   No wonder informed observers of the New Delhi scene and astute analysts are virtually unanimous that both sides are ‘playing for time’ and wanting to drag their discussions as much as they can, without reaching the point of decision. But for how long can the exercise in marking time and shadow boxing go on? And that is where the critically important factor of this year’s ‘please-all’ Budget — particularly its two provisions, a whopping Rs 60,000 crore waiver from bank loans to poor farmers and an across-the-board tax concession to the middle class — come in. Clearly, the Congress cannot risk any threat to the government’s majority in Parliament until the Budget, expected to garner oodles of votes, is passed.
   All concerned are therefore left with just two options. One is the typical way of Indian politicians to let matters drift and take their own course. This, of course, would mean that the Indo-US deal would have to wait for the new American dispensation, which may or may not have the time or inclination to take it up during its first year in office. Earlier fears that a Democratic administration might create difficulties have subsided somewhat because indications from Washington are that enough bipartisan support in favour of the deal persists in the interest of closer relations with ‘rising India’.
   The second option is to wait for the Budget to be passed by mid-May and then to push the deal. The signing of the safeguards agreement with the IAEA is essential for the next step of taking the deal to the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) for a change in its guidelines, without which there cannot be any exemption from the technology denial regime of which India has been a victim for 34 years. Only after the NSG changes its rules can the US Congress consider the ‘123 agreement’ with India for endorsement. By then the UPA’s would be a minority government.
   Although the Indian Constitution gives the Executive the right to enter into and even ratify international treaties without any reference to Parliament, time was when even Pranab Mukherjee felt that a minority government should not sign an agreement of importance and sensitivity. But the US State Department was quick to declare that America had no problem signing a treaty with a minority government in New Delhi. According to K. Subrahmanyam, the country’s premier security analyst and a staunch supporter of the Indo-US deal, of the 192 members of the UN, nearly two-thirds do not have anything like a representative government, so no question of a majority or minority government should arise. Those in favour of the deal demand that the deal should be pushed and concluded during the Bush presidency, not delayed unnecessarily. To President Bush also, it is important to have a positive achievement in his otherwise bleak foreign policy legacy.
   As far as can be ascertained, more knowledgeable Indians are betting on the second option, for two powerful reasons. First, the only reason for the current dilly-dallying is the strong opposition of the Congress’s allies and even of many Congress MPs to face early elections; and yet parliamentary elections, perhaps October–November this year, are becoming unavoidable, deal or no deal. This is because the Marxists and the Front they head have made no secret of their resolve to break their current relationship with the Congress and to fight the next elections in bitter opposition to it, under the banner of a ‘Third Alternative’, spurning both the Congress and the BJP
   Secondly, from the Congress party’s own point of view, it would be wrong to wait for parliamentary elections for a whole year. For one thing, all the beneficiaries of the massive sops in the Budget might forget them over time. For another, by this time next year the economic situation across the world, not just in India, would be worse than now. Consequently, the earlier the poll is held the better for the incumbent coalition.
   Even so, a caveat is called for. Indian political life seldom follows the dictates of logic, and can often be utterly wayward and bizarre. On 19 March Pranab Babu frankly confessed to Parliament that at present he could ‘neither mend the deal, nor end it, for we are still engaged in discussions’.  The best we can do, therefore, is to wait and watch.

                          
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