Who Loses?

From all accounts, the path-breaking Indo-US nucleardeal is all but dead and is on a hope-support system. For thirty years, Indiahad battled the imposition of unjust sanctions on her trade in technology andhigh tech equipment with the world, as a consequence of an elaborate structureof export controls built at the initiative of the US, after India's nuclearexplosion of 1974. 

It should be remembered that India had broken no laws to which it hadsubscribed, and had been 'punished' by states which themselves had nuclearweapons or whose security was guaranteed by the nuclear weapons of others. Inthe UN and in all forums, India had protested against the inequity of these adhoc export control regimes; over the years, it became clear that the key tounlocking the door of free trade in high and dual use technology lay with onecountry, the United States. 

In a massive effort initiated by the NDA government and completed by thepresent government, the US gave India the key; ironically, it now appears thatdomestic politics is preventing India from freeing herself from thesetroublesome restraints.

The country needs to know who is to blame--it is quite clear who loses. Indiadoes. Why is India still denied the freedom, for example of China, who breaksevery rule in the book, to upgrade her technology through internationalcooperation, to widen her choices in determining the best energy mix for anenergy starved economy?

For once, we cannot blame the United States nor, at the moment, at least, anyother country. Forces within the country are preventing India from even makingher case to the world, whether it be the Board of Governors of the IAEA or thecountries of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Effectively, domestic politics, notdomestic interests, is holding India back from cooperation in the field ofcivilian nuclear energy with any country of the world. Who is to blame? Who andwhy has the country been put in shackles by people who are supposed to berepresenting the interests of the people of India?

Clearly, the blame will have to be put at the door of all the political partieswho have brought India to this state.

In the NDA government, it was the BJP, whose touch onforeign policy issues was much more deft than with domestic ones, which hadstarted the delicate process of persuading the US to come to terms with India'sstatus as a nuclear weapon state; it was this party which had starteddiscussions on conditions under which the embargos under which India had beenput, could be lifted. Yet, regardless of what is being said at the moment bytheir spokesmen, they seem determined to stifle the very effort that they hadpromoted. 

We should be quite clear: the Hyde Act has been passed. It stays, with allthe conditions found objectionable by the BJP, as US law. No amount ofcomplaining is going to change that. On the other hand, the 123 agreementnegotiated by India on the basis of that law, is being frittered away, when itis possibly the best possible outcome India could have expected from any USAdministration. It is an agreement that opens the door to internationalcooperation in civilian nuclear energy, without closing options on our strategicprogramme. 

The BJP complains that they have not been consulted by the government; yetParliament has been kept fully informed and, soon after the 123 agreement wasfinalized between the negotiators of India and the US, the Prime Ministerhimself met some BJP leaders to brief them on the outcome. Mr. Advani wants toamend India's Atomic Energy Act to counter the possible effects of the Hyde Act.Surely this can be considered; but why stall the agreement? 

As for the objections of the Left Front, they not onlyring hollow, but insincere and motivated by a mysterious agenda. Are they goingto stop the people to people contact between the US and India? Can they affordto stop the economic and commercial links that have been established between thetwo countries? Do they think that India is so weak that it cannot maintain herindependence because of one agreement, however significant that may be? 

The Left are against the deal, not because there is anything inherentlyobjectionable in the deal itself, but because it would remove a major thorn inthe side of Indo-US relations. They appear willing to deny India the freedom tocooperate internationally in the area of nuclear energy, because, like an oldEnglish king, they object to closer Indo-US relations. 

What is evident, is that the Left are stopping India from grabbing anopportunity to free herself from the shackles of sanctions, and from cooperatingwith the rest of the world. For a grouping that has failed to deliver even basicneeds of food, clothing, shelter and education to the people of the states wherethey are in government, it is more than a little rich to object, on the basis ofideology, to an agreement which can, if implemented, only help to better thelives of those benighted people. Yet the government, in its wisdom, permits theLeft to hold it hostage on an issue where the benefits to India are so clear.

The deepest disappointment is the way in which the UPAgovernment has been dealing with the issue. After obtaining an outstandingachievement for the country, gains for the country are being bartered away--forwhat? Why has it not taken the opposition into confidence on this issue? Thereis no need to cosy up to the opposition, but it is for the country that, on asingle issue, adversarial relations need to be put aside. Ten years down theline, who will take the blame, if the deal does not go through now?

If the deal dose not go through, it is true that the world will not end, butIndia will have lost. It would have lost an opportunity which may never comeback. After having extracted so many concessions from the Americans, who wouldwant to be in the shoes of the external affairs minister who now goes to thatcountry to tell them that we are unable to accept those concessions?

Arundhati Ghose was India's permanent representative/ ambassador to theUnited Nations. In 1996, she dramatically vetoed the Comprehensive Test BanTreaty at the Conference on Disarmament, a step that some say would not havebeen taken without her. This piece was originally written for OutlookSaptahik