How A 'Tired' PM Became A 'Bold' PM

THIS is no time for partisan debate. All of us who comment on national affairs have a solemn responsibility to weigh our words and inferences with utmost caution. Those who rule us have taken measures in the last few days which will change the destiny of this and future generations of Indians. Mr Vajpayee and his ministers, therefore, deserve every consideration before judgement is passed. If clear judgement is not possible and a third umpire is required, the benefit of the doubt must go to the government. India’s capacity to repel external aggression concerns each

and every citizen; that concern needs to be lifted out of party wrangling.

Like countless others, I have done little else in the past week but examine and discuss with friends all the justification put forward by the Vajpayee government. The prime minister states, as he did in his letter to President Clinton, that he is "deeply concerned at the deteriorating security environment, especially the nuclear environment". If that statement is even 50 per cent correct, all questions must cease immediately; the debate must end.

Alas, on the evidence submitted—and there has been precious little—by the government, a completely different conclusion appears unavoidable: India’s security environment in the last few years has not deteriorated, in fact it has improved marginally; there are no new threats to India’s security from any country. There are, however, plenty of threats to the security of Mr Vajpayee’s prime ministership.

 Assume that new and urgent threats had been suddenly discovered. Mr Vajpayee’s categorical promise, then, when he read out the National Agenda for Governance regarding the exercise of the nuclear option, becomes puzzling. The prime minister had announced that his government was committed to setting up a National Security Council. This body would "undertake India’s first strategic defence review" and only then would the decision on the nuclear option be taken. George Fernandes was even more specific. He said at a press conference on March 20 that the "nuclear option had been put on hold. We did not say we were going for nuclear weapons. We will reevaluate policy to ensure security.... In the light of that we will decide on the nuclear option."

Twenty-four hours before the blasts at Pokhran, Mr Vajpayee’s trusted aide, Jas-want Singh, was interviewing candidates for the top job in the National Security Council. Leave alone the strategic review, the body which was supposed to conduct the review remains on paper. I think the country has every right to ask Mr Vajpayee when this review took place and what were its findings? If the idea of a strategic review was abandoned, what were the reasons for abandoning it? You cannot place much faith in the abilities of the government to undertake a detailed strategic review when it cannot even decide if the Chinese have built a helipad somewhere in the Northeast. (George Fernandes says yes, Atalji says no.)

If for some classified reason Mr Vajpayee feels that the new threats cannot be made public, he should at least have been more open with Bill Clinton and the other leaders he wrote to justifying his government’s decision. These leaders, particularly the American president, are determined to turn India into an international pariah, so the need to give these gentlemen a full and comprehensive explanation was imperative. Mr Vajpayee’s letter to Clinton is a classic in terms of fudging. It is so casually written that the Americans say it adds "insult to injury". Mr Vajpayee’s "deteriorating security environment" consists of "Chinese armed aggression against India in 1962". And the threat from Pakistan consists of "three aggressions we have suffered in the last 50 years. And for the last 10 years we have been the victim of unremitting terrorism and militancy sponsored by it...especially in Jammu and Kashmir."

 No factual inaccuracy here, but the Chinese aggression is over 35 years old, the last war with Pakistan is 27 years old, while militancy in Kashmir is on the decline with near-normalcy returning to the state. Furthermore, India’s relationship with China on all fronts has improved dramatically (trade figures will bear this out) even though a long-standing border dispute moves slowly, perhaps too slowly, towards resolution. If a strategic defence review had been initiated there is no guarantee that it would have concurred with Vajpayee’s "deteriorating security environment".

And what happened to the famous Coco Islands around Myanmar? George Fernandes made much of hostile Chinese surveillance of India from these islands. He even announced that the Chinese had placed missiles there, all of them targeted towards Indian cities. This is certainly a dangerous element and constitutes a new threat, but ever since the emphatic denial from Beijing and, more significantly, ever since the Pokhran blasts, Coco Islands seem to have disappeared into thin air. No one in Vajpayee’s team mentions them.

As far as the threat from Pakistan, even our establishment Genghis Khans concede that Islamabad, with or without nuclear capability, is more than matched by India’s conventional and nuclear strength. Pakistan poses no threat to India militarily; it can at most harass us by proxy wars, but even here the present regime has realised that the Indian state has extraordinary resilience and staying power. Efforts from Pakistan to normalise relations, the clamour for more trade, the willingness not to make Kashmir a hurdle in bilateral dialogue—all this is the result of a new and grudging acceptance of India’s superpower status in the region. They may not like it, but they have begun to accept it.

The five blasts reintroduce the poison in our relationship. Whatever the Pakistanis tell the Americans, sooner rather later, Islamabad too will conduct its own test—and induct nuclear weapons. A debilitating and criminally wasteful arms race already existed in the subcontinent; now we have gone and added the nuclear component to it. Next time there is a border skirmish, or something bigger, petrified citizens in both countries will be trembling wondering when the dreaded button will be pressed—and in which country. Indo-Pak ties, moving steadily, courtesy a dialogue, have been put back, maybe, 20 years.

A week before Mr Vajpayee pressed the button, India had in its 50-year existence as a free nation-state never been more psychologically and physically secure. The country’s democracy had demonstrated an unsuspected capacity to accommodate unstable coalition arrangements, the economy, though slowed down slightly, was still growing with projections being made whether 2005 or 2010 would see India as an economic superpower, the nation’s military strength was awesome, so awesome that it sent shivers in the region.

It is possible that I may have accidentally or deliberately ignored some threats, or aspects of the threats. If so, correction should be swift. If Mr Vajpayee can shoot off letters to nine world leaders, including the prime minister of Mauritius, surely he has a responsibility to share with his fellow countrymen what grave and fresh security threats led him to May 11? Where is the nation-wide broadcast? Where are briefings by key ministers? If the Pokhran tests deserve dancing and crackers and distribution of ladoos and "victory rallies", they also deserve a few straight answers.

So, why did the BJP government do it? Why did a 50-day coalition on the verge of collapse rush into an act which at least three infinitely more stable regimes had considered—and rejected. The reason is so obvious, so unsubtle, that it barely needs mentioning. A rookie political reporter could supply it. We have only to reflect on the day Mr Vajpayee made the earth-shaking announcement. On that day the papers were full of public criticisms of the PM delivered, this time, by Ramakrishna Hegde. "Tired", "fatigued", "indecisive" was how Hegde described Vajpayee and his government.

Interestingly, around 3 p.m. last Monday when word got around in newspaper offices that the prime minister had summoned journalists for a hastily organised press conference, the buzz among mediapersons was that Vajpayee was throwing in the towel; he had had enough of this coalition nonsense with his own ministers rubbishing him in the media and his own party (read the RSS) covertly discrediting his pragmatic agenda. (Those who know Vajpayee intimately, and there are not many, say he may be a bit of a hand-wringer, but he is no quitter.)

INSTEAD, the announcement he made "electrified the nation" and within minutes, in the words of Mr Pramod Mahajan, a "tired" prime minister became a "bold" prime minister. It was in the tactical sense a master move. To his own constituency, restive, angry, betrayed, Mr Vajpayee was saying: I am sorry I have not been able to build you a Ram temple, neither have I been able to give you a Uniform Civil Code, nor have I been able to suspend Article 370. But I am giving you something much, much better and much, much bigger—a BJP bomb.

The impact outside the party was predictable. Most of the Opposition, after a small initial sulk, found voice. Given the charged public mood, they decided to "hail" the achievement because contesting it would have been suicidal. A Congress leader told me: "We know this is a blatantly political act, but what can we do...." The man and woman on the street reacted as if India had won the World Cup. On Tuesday morning voices of dissent vanished. It was as if the nation had been mesmerised.

Prime Ministers (and the governments they head) on the verge of losing their jobs all play "cards". This is an old and moderately effective play first introduced by Indira Gandhi. Mr V.P. Singh discovered Mandal to counter Devi Lal; Rajiv Gandhi dispatched troops to conduct provocative military exercises on the Pakistan border when the Bofors scandal became too hot; P.V. Narasimha Rao, surrounded by impending charges of corruption against himself, thought a languishing diary with names would be useful. Thus, Mr Vajpayee is in good company. The only difference is the breathtaking audacity of his card. It is, as our cover-line says, the Mother of all Gambles. And, unlike other cards, this one cannot be called back.

 We must not forget one last justification. The BJP and its apologists say the government had to rush into the tests because, like the French and the Chinese, it now wants to sign the CTBT. Meanwhile, the publicly announced strategic review had to be cancelled because the treaty comes up for early ratification. It is a good try, but alas, it is not backed up by facts.

Over the last week Outlook has tried with great diligence both at the Foreign and the Prime Minister’s Offices to elicit whether there was any contingency plan on signing the treaty once the tests had been conducted. We discovered that after May 11 there was utter confusion at the PMO and the MEA on the issue. When speculation that we might consider signing the CTBT surfaced, a caveat was introduced: we might consider signing if certain clauses in the treaty were modified. Which clauses? Again, no one seemed to know. Thus, it is clear that the CTBT justification was an after-thought.

Ratification of CTBT? Another red herring. The date for ratification is not next week or next month, but September 1999. Therefore, if the government was serious about the strategic review, there was plenty of time left to conduct it.

Are critics of the tests all CIA agents? Should we not be grateful to Mr Vajpayee for "making Indians everywhere walk tall"? Have people like me lost all sense of national pride? Possibly, but in a genuine democracy dissent and opposition are vital. So, here goes. Nuclear bombs do not make a nation great (North Korea is a prime example), particularly when such capability is acquired for short-term electoral gain rather than strategic needs. If you add the devastating economic consequences inevitable, you realise what a mess the country has got itself into. "We will show the world" is easier said than done.

India was already a great nation before May 11. It would become an even greater nation if 44 per cent of its population did not live in absolute poverty.