PM’s got it Wrong

The nuclear deal is finally about severely reorienting India's foreign and security policies to align them with the US. It means bidding goodbye to the 60-year-long Nehruvian consensus on non-alignment, peace, balance and justice in the world

Praful Bidwai Delhi

When Manmohan Singh launched his 'free-market' or neo-liberal policies in 1991 as Union Finance Minister, he did so from the unique vantage-point of a bureaucrat backed by his political boss, PV Narasimha Rao, the prime minister. He didn't have to take responsibility for his actions or their consequences. Opposition to his policies could be blunted or deflected because there was a balance-of-payments crisis, to resolve which the government mortgaged its gold reserves. Singh fully exploited this short-term crisis to drive a much bigger long-term agenda of liberalisation, deregulation, privatisation and globalisation. This put India firmly on a skewed, dualistic, inequality-enhancing growth pattern, which persists even today.

Singh got away with his unpopular — and for most people, painful — policies because Rao staunchly backed him out of the cynical belief that after the Soviet Union's collapse, India had no option but to play 'the only game in town': the American game. Singh imagined he could repeat the same formula with the India-US nuclear cooperation deal. The dyed-in-the-wool bureaucrat that he is, he got a bureaucrats-only team to negotiate the deal in all its nine rounds, without involving a single politician of the UPA or the opposition.

Throughout two years, Singh made no effort to build a political consensus either on the context or purposes of the '123 agreement', or on its text. But there's no equivalent of a balance-of-payments crisis today which could be deviously used to manufacture urgency and push through a radical reorientation of India's posture vis-à-vis the world. Let's be clear: the deal isn't only about nuclear power, breaking technology barriers imposed after Pokharan-I (1974), or even getting India's nuclear weapons legitimised. It is ultimately about severely reorienting India's foreign and security policies away from past moorings to align them with the US. It means bidding goodbye to the 60-year-long Nehruvian consensus on non-alignment and advocacy of peace, balance and justice in the world.

Such a paradigm shift cannot be executed without a strong, consensual political mandate. In its absence, the '123 agreement' has aroused suspicion and opposition. The fiercest, and best-informed, opposition comes from the Left, which has warned of “serious consequences” if the UPA doesn't suspend further talks on completing the deal. Its stand on the deal follows deliberations within and between its four constituent parties, led by the CPM. Without the Left's 59 MPs, there is no way the 220-member UPA can muster a viable majority in the 543-member Lok Sabha, even with the BSP’s 18 MPs.

Yet, Singh wantonly provoked the Left to sharpen its opposition to the deal through his interview to the Kolkata-based Telegraph (August 11, 2007). His self-styled advisers told him he should “call the Left's bluff”. He taunted it for not having “thought” things “through”, and said: “It is an honourable deal …if (the Left parties) want to withdraw support, so be it…”

The too-clever-by-half advisers of the prime minister reckoned this would help him play the CPM's “moderate modernisers” in West Bengal off against its “hardliners” to trump the latter's opposition. This betrays a serious misunderstanding of how the Left parties make policy decisions. It also underrates the unanimity within them on foreign policy and security issues. The Left's reaction was ballistic. Within three days, Singh was begging CPM general secretary Prakash Karat for reconciliation.

Singh's tactical errors have aggravated the Left's disaffection with the deal. Unlike the BJP — which initiated the “strategic partnership” with the US, and which criticises the '123 agreement' entirely from a crude nuclear-nationalist standpoint — the Left has fundamental problems with it. The Left rightly sees the deal as inseparable from India's strategic embrace of the US, which will erode India's foreign policy independence, promote collusion with Washington's 'Empire' project and participation in its Asian alliance system. This can damage India's global standing and relations with neighbours.

Besides this strategic objection, the Left also advances a procedural argument, focused on differences between '123' and Singh's assurances to Parliament (discussed here in the June issue of this magazine). This pertains to the scope of nuclear cooperation and the US's 'right of return' in case India conducts tests. This is a weak argument which the Left shares with other parties who wrongly make national sovereignty dependent on the possession of mass-destruction weapons.

However, to its credit, the Left also says that the deal is incompatible with India's professed commitment to fight for global nuclear disarmament. This argument falls short of criticising the deal for legitimising India's nuclear weapons (which the Left opposes). Even so, this is a valuable and principled contribution.

The Left is ambivalent on the deal's promotion of nuclear power as the key to India's energy security. But unlike any other party, it at least says this role is 'debatable'. As argued in the June issue, nuclear power is costly, unacceptably hazardous and environmentally unsound. It can at best make a marginal contribution to our power generation (currently under three per cent of the total).

However, instead of honestly grappling with these objections, the UPA has launched a campaign accusing the Left of acting at China's and Pakistan's behest. This tendentious charge is articulated through Rightwing pro-US China-baiters masquerading as “experts”. In reality, there is no live contact between the Indian Left and the Chinese Communist Party; indeed the Left disagrees with some of their policies.

Underway now is the most vicious attack on the Left since the 1960s. This new McCarthyism betrays malignant intolerance. Such intolerance can only have dangerous consequences for public debate. If every dissenting opinion is attributed to the 'foreign hand', and if every difference on principle is reduced to an 'ego clash', we will have no rational public discourse, so essential to democracy.

This doesn't deny that the Left has shifted some goalposts in criticising the deal over two years. It didn't agitate the issue in public. The nuclear deal is fatally flawed: it is bad for global and regional peace, will encourage inappropriate energy development, and prevent India from playing a worthy global role to promote justice, equality and peace. The Left has every right to oppose the deal and mobilise mass opinion against it. But it would be wrong to withdraw support to the UPA on that ground. The deal is itself part of a longer and larger process of India's foreign policy reorientation. Merely suspending the deal won't reverse this process. That needs a long-drawn out grassroots campaigning — not shortcuts.

The Left must consider if foreign policy is the best issue on which to confront the UPA. There are many other burning questions, including the agrarian crisis and farmer suicides, unemployment, implementation of the Srikrishna report, access to healthcare, to name a few. Withdrawing support to the UPA would render the government vulnerable, and encourage/strengthen the BJP. The Left's principal argument for supporting the UPA in 2004 was to isolate the BJP. This remains valid today.

However, the primary onus for defusing the crisis is on the UPA. It must respect that anti-imperialism is part of the Left's core-identity. It must seriously address the Left's concerns while putting on hold further talks to finalise the deal. Nothing will be lost if its approval and ratification is delayed by some months. One can only hope wiser counsels prevail.