Goodbye, and good riddance

I am sure you have heard this before: In Chinese, the term for “crisis” is a compound of “opportunity” and “danger”. The United Progressive Alliance government is in the midst of a crisis and it is not surprising that it confronts both danger and opportunity. What the former is has been spelt out ad nauseum by Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Prakash Karat, most recently after the Politburo meeting on Sunday — take one more step on the Indo-US nuclear deal and we will blow your government out of the water.
Not many have thought of the opportunity that the threat provides for the Congress party to take the much needed and long delayed step of redefining its politics and policies to align itself with today's realities — both economic and political. In other words, regaining its identity as India's pre-eminent political party, based on its programmes and principles, derived from its own history, instead of having to be in the awkward situation of being the dog which is wagged by the tail.


Ever since Jawaharlal Nehru passed away, the party has struggled for its soul. It has been assailed by the temptations of the Left and of the Right, and never quite regained its equipoise. There was a brief moment when, under Rajiv Gandhi the party began to move in that direction. The young prime minister adopted a pragmatic, forward looking approach that would have brought liberalisation a decade before it came. But he was brought down by a combination of scandals and bad karma.
Pandit Nehru had no problem with the Communists. His own history and understanding of the party went back to its very founding. He had witnessed the efforts of the Communists to penetrate the Congress and take over its agenda under the guise of the Congress Socialist Party faction within the party. He had seen how Communists had consolidated themselves in India by supporting the British during World War II, opposing the Quit India Movement and expanding their base at the expense of the Congress whose leaders were in jail.

Leaders

So, after Independence, his approach was to pick and choose what he wanted. He adapted central planning to Indian circumstances — a private sector developing on the foundations of a centrally planned infrastructure. Where the Communists would have wanted alignment, his foreign policy, stubbornly sought non-alignment. It remained independent in spite of the West's co-option of Pakistan as a military ally. Panditji did not hesitate to fight the Communists as he did militarily in Telengana, and through democratic means in Kerala in 1957.
The problem was Indira Gandhi. In a bid to distance herself from the Congress old guard, she hocked the soul of the party to the Communists, of the CPI variety. They encouraged her to go back on solemn assurances to the former royalty and deny them privy purses, nationalise banks and other businesses. They were the most vociferous supporters of the Emergency that took away the common liberties of the people and took the opportunity to place party members and fellow travelers in various government bodies and educational institutions.
Indira paid back the debt by standing on the wrong side of history and refusing to openly condemn the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980. But thereafter she considered the debt paid and moved back to the political centre by beginning a process of rapprochement with the United States. The present confused attitude of the Congress party towards the Communists has come after the prime ministership of P.V. Narasimha Rao, who was a seasoned politician and knew what Communist politics was all about from Andhra Pradesh. Sonia Gandhi, on the other hand, has had little ground experience in the politics of the country. As a person who values loyalty, what she remembered, when the Indo-US nuclear crisis first began to loom last August, was that the Communists had unreservedly backed her on the most important issue of her political life — the BJP's attempt to raise the issue of her foreign origin. In refusing to precipitate the break last October, she has made what could be a major political blunder.
She does not realise that loyalty and ideological consistency are highly over-rated virtues in Indian politics. What really matters is opportunism. Take the Communists — they have not hesitated to ally themselves to fundamentalists like Abdul Naseer Mahdani to break the Indian Union Muslim League’s hold in north Kerala. Such opportunism has a old history in Leninist parties. World War II was a war of imperialist redivision till June 22, 1941, thereafter it became the People’s war.

Opportunists

Or, consider the DMK. It was part of the national coalition with the BJP for six long years. Yet two weeks ago we heard Mr. Karunanidhi declaiming on the importance of the UPA to stand with the Left so as to defend secularism. What the present situation then offers is a chance for the Congress to dump allies like the DMK and “friends” like the Communists.
The DMK should be shed because, in baldly opportunistic terms, Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK is almost certainly likely to sweep the coming elections. There are no ideological differences between the two, so the choice is simple — try and hook the winner.
Dumping the Left is important for the long-term future of the party. With the Left’s stranglehold, the Congress will be on permanent life-support. If it must flourish, it needs to catch up with what was wrought in 1991. There is need to achieve complete privatisation of the public sector, trade liberalisation and financial deregulation and reform of labour laws. Politically, India needs to get involved in the new and evolving Asian security architecture that connects democratic Japan, Australia, Asean and the United States.

Opponents

The Communists’ stand on the nuclear deal reflects less of its Luddite tendencies and more of its refusal to recognise the geopolitical realities of the post-Soviet world. The old CPI is of little consequence. Mr. Bardhan bellowing “bhar mein jayey stock market” (the hell with the stock market) sums up his world which denies reality for the sake of alleged ideological purity. All it does is to make for good bytes on TV, but it signifies little otherwise. The CPI(M)’s vigour comes from a general secretary who should have been in command of the party in 1980. In 2008, he is an anachronism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the Chinese economy, orthodox Marxism-Leninism has lost whatever rationale it had. It is not surprising that the CPI(M) has lost whatever vitality it had. Its programme refuses to account for the enormous changes that have taken place in the world and within India. This leads to its mulish stand on fighting US imperialism at a time when the US is finally declining, or to, Canute-like, resist economic reform that will make India a better market-based economy.
The Congress party's reassertion of its own political identity will set the basis for its clash with the BJP. Given its broad-based social and economic programmes and its secular politics, the field is stacked in the Congress’ favour, no matter what the result of the next election is. But to achieve its destiny, the party needs to transform this crisis into a historic opportunity. To this end, to use another Chinese saying, it must seize this hour, this day.
This article first appeared in Mail Today July 2, 2008

Why is the CPI(M) cutting its nose to spite the country's face ?

On May 23, and on June 21, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) issued statements on the nuclear deal. The burden of the two notes was roughly similar — questioning the government’s statements and figures on the energy issue and claiming that these were being fudged, or slanted, to promote the Indo-US nuclear deal.
The May note accused the government of negligence resulting in a temporary shortage of uranium in the country. And the second claimed that the government had launched a “massive disinformation campaign” that nuclear energy was not only a solution to the shortage of electricity in the country, but also the oil price rise. The June statement then went on to claim that the best way to tackling the problem would be to build coal-fired plants, and while indigenous technology based nuclear energy could be used in the future, it would only meet 8 per cent of our electricity demand. Another leading statement claimed that our energy security could be better served by the Iran gas pipeline. The central point of the notes, however, was that the real intention of government policy was to promote India-US strategic ties.
I see nothing sinister in developing India-US ties. If the country needs strategic ties, I would rather have them with the world’s dominant power than any wannabe. The US has, in the past, helped us some and harmed us some, and there is every indication they mean well in the future, no doubt for their own reasons. On the other hand China, which the CPI(M) looks to as an ideal, has not helped us any, harmed us more, and their future attitude towards India remains a big question mark.

Figures

I don’t know where the CPI(M) has got its figures from. The ones I am offering comes from a 2007 Planning Commission Report of the Expert Committee on Integrated Energy Policy which was chaired by Kirit Parikh. Essentially what it says is that to maintain an 8 per cent rate of growth, as well as our commitments, moral if not legal, to a regime demanding the least possible carbon emissions, we would require a fuel mix that would annually comprise 350 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe), 150 Mtoe of natural gas, 632 Mtoe of coal, 35 of hydro power, 98 of nuclear, 87 of renewables of wind, 185 of non-commercials like fuel wood.
But while coal and oil will form the dominant fuels in any mix, the addition of nuclear and other fuels will make the crucial difference in the sheer availability of power, as well as our carbon footprint. India would, in this scenario, which is the greenest among those offered, have carbon dioxide emissions of some 3.9 billion tonnes in 2030(compared with the 5.5 billion tonnes for the US today).
It is possible, for example to forgo the nuclear in this mix, but the balance would have to be made up with oil, natural gas or coal, of which two are getting more expensive by the day, and there are quality problems with the third. The Parikh committee had calculated that if we forgo the nuclear and natural gas import option and go exclusively for coal, then, because of the poor quality of our coal, the requirement would increase from 415 million tonnes in 2004-5 to 2,500 million tonnes in 2031-2. Since the quality of Indian coal is deteriorating steadily, the actual requirement could be nearly 3,000 million tonnes. The massive increase in coal requirement could actually compel us to import huge quantities of coal. “This,” the committee noted dryly, “would actually increase our energy dependency on imports even more than today.” Think also of the logistics of storing and transporting it all over the country.
In the May statement, the CPI(M) had criticised the government for misleading the country about uranium shortages. The facts are that Indian uranium is of extremely poor quality. Efforts to open mines in Kadapa district in Andhra Pradesh and in Meghalaya are being held up by public protest. The CPI(M) of all parties should know that land acquisition for industrial projects has become a major issue in the country. But the real issue is not availability but the need to hedge against technological obstacles that may appear in the way of our ambitious three-stage nuclear programme which has not yet reached stage two and is only scheduled to reach its pinnacle by 2030 and beyond.
Incidentally, the Parikh committee’s nuclear scenario of 63,000 MW by 2030 is based on the import of 6000 MW of light water reactors because it was written before the Indo-US nuclear deal was signed. The CPI(M) statement’s sneering reference to having only 8 per cent of our energy demand met through nuclear energy in the future can have an alternate track if reactors and capital could be freely imported. It is only through a conscious policy begun in the 1970s does France today use nuclear energy to produce 79 per cent of its electricity, and most of this is through imported uranium.
Actually India’s only hope for some kind of self-sufficiency lies in being able to bridge the current shortage of uranium, stabilise its fast breeder programme and go on to the advanced thorium reactor phase. The payoff would come in the post 2050 period when it could produce 275,000 MW of electricity.

Facts

Proposing that India achieves energy security through the Iran gas pipeline is also intriguing. I am not against the pipeline deal because I think that India needs all the energy it can get, from whatever source it can locate. The problem with pipelines, not just from Iran, is that they point only in one direction. That is, the gas can only flow in one channel from the source to the destination. In the event of a disruption, it leaves industries and users downstream high and dry. The Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline has to traverse through Iranian and Pakistani Balochistan. Google and find out how many times the gas supplies between Pakistan’s Balochi gas fields and the rest of the country have been disrupted by Baloch nationalists in the past year. Both parts of Balochistan are disturbed areas and relying on a smooth gas flow through the region before peace has been restored there is being optimistic, to say the least. Ties between India and Pakistan are also better, but things are not quite normal. And expectations that Iran will somehow behave differently from other rich oil and gas producers can only be termed naive.

Independence

The CPI(M) and others involved in the current debate need to focus on the larger issue of the country’s energy needs. Here is a perspective: China’s current annual consumption of energy is 1100-1200 Mtoe (Parikh Committee draft report figures), the USA is 2400-2500. India consumes just 327 Mtoe. Even if we use the most optimistic coal-based scenario, we would just about consume, in 2030, what China consumes today. The fact staring us in the face is that there can never be energy independence for a country that is short of almost every energy source. No matter how you game it, we will be dependent for oil and natural gas on the outside world, and they will make up between 35 (optimistic) to 42 (pessimistic) percent of our energy mix in 2030.
The CPI(M) seems to have no problem with India depending on Iran and the OPEC cartel, which has allowed prices to rise from $60 to $130 in less than a year. They do seem to be getting worked up about depending on the Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel whose membership comprises not just of the US and its allies, but Brazil, South Africa, France, China and Russia.
Actually the only way we can have energy independence is to go back to Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of an India comprising of independent village communities. The alternative is a policy of promoting energy efficiency and conservation, and to spread our risks. These issues don’t move the CPI(M). In their blinkered geopolitical vision, opposing the US is more important than a prudent effort to secure the country’s energy future.
This appeared in Mail Today June 24, 2008

"Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall"

Can the UPA be put together again ?


Once upon a time, six months ago to be exact, there was a government that was moving full steam ahead. The economy was flourishing, the allies quiescent, and the Opposition dead beat. The ruling party had managed to get its nominee appointed President of the Republic — a sign of its commanding position — the Sensex had breached the 15,000 mark in the space of just half a year, and India’s traditional bugbear, Pakistan, was in the midst of a deep political crisis brought on by the sacking of the Chief Justice of its Supreme Court and the Lal Masjid affair.
Then suddenly the ground started slipping. And in the space of the next six months, Humpty Dumpty was pushed off his perch, ironically by his own friends, and has come apart. Now the proverbial King’s men are exerting mightily to put him together again to fight the next general elections, but somehow the glue does not seem to stick.

War

It is not as though the warning signals were not there. The defeat in the UP assembly elections in May came despite an enormous amount of effort by the crown prince Rahul Gandhi. But the rapidity with which the whole picture changed in August and September was staggering. It began with the revolt of the CPI(M). For two years since the Indo-US nuclear deal had been announced in July 2005, the party had gone along with the government probably in the belief that the deal would not really come through. Then at the end of July it became clear that the impossible had been achieved, that the country had managed to get a generous 123 Agreement with the US. Suddenly the Left attitude changed and CPI(M) General Secretary Prakash Karat launched a major campaign to derail not just the deal, but question the entire foreign policy track of the United Progressive Alliance.
Buoyed by its success till then, the Congress was initially inclined to fight and tell the Left where to get off. In early October, Sonia Gandhi declared that those attacking the deal were “enemies of development”. There was talk of a possible general election. And then came the craven U-turn: Sonia said her reference was specific to Haryana and Manmohan Singh declared that if the deal did not come through it would not be the end of life. The Congress’ enthusiasm to fight the Left came a cropper when close allies like M. Karunanidhi and Lalu Prasad Yadav said that they were not for elections and could even break with the UPA on the issue.
Coincidentally just as the UPA relationship was hitting the nadir, the Sangh Parivar got out of its trough. Confronted with the possibility of general elections, the RSS and BJP sorted out their differences in quick time and formally anointed L.K. Advani as the leader of the party. This came with the important electoral victory of the party in Gujarat, and then Himachal. There has been a great deal of hand-wringing and analysis over the BJP’s success and the Congress’ defeat.

Casualties

But not many have considered asking as to why the average voter in Gujarat and Himachal, even if they were no votaries of Hindutva, would have voted for the Congress. First, the advocates of anti-communal politics had muddled their message by associating with a range of BJP rebels, some who were no less communal than Narendra Modi. Second, the sight of the great anti-communal warriors fighting each other to death on the specious issue of “American imperialism”, would not have been the most reassuring for a voter.
Having humiliated the Congress, the Left could hardly expect it to look tall and fight the BJP in Gujarat. Purely coincidentally, these developments came at the very time that the Left got the worst drubbing of its recent political life on the Nandigram issue where, among others, it confronted the Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Hind, the powerful organisation of Muslim clerics.
So here we are at the beginning of 2008, surveying the ruins of a once proud alliance and wondering whether it can be put together again. With elections just a year or so away, the Congress and its allies, which includes the Left, must ask the question: Just what have they achieved in the past three years? On what basis should the people vote for them the next time around?
True, the UPA has given us a stable government whose record is not marred by a Gujarat-type pogrom; its competent handling of foreign relations has enhanced India’s standing in the world. But economic growth has come on its own, or at least, without any significant government intervention, and despite the best efforts of the Left to sabotage it. Let’s not tarry on the still cooking nuclear deal. What about the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme? According to a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General, it is not working. The government has hardly shown itself as an exceptional protector of the country, or a fighter against communal violence.
This is not to say that the condition of the other parties is any better. The coming year will see a bonfire of the vanities of other political formations as well. The BJP may send out its new poster-boy Narendra Modi to sup with Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu, but it remains to be seen whether he gets the same kind of reception with Chandrababu Naidu or Nitish Kumar. Nandigram has yet to play itself out, not so much in terms of Mamta Banerji’s antics, but the alienation of the Muslim community from the Left.
Both the Congress and the BJP have been out of the Uttar Pradesh playing field and they don’t know how to get back on. The Congress’ chosen method is throwing sops that elude the targets and land up in the pockets of middle-men; as for the BJP, it is whistling in the dark hoping that Sethusamudram will do for them what the Ram Mandir did not. Turning up the communal temperature by using terrorism as the issue remains its most visible option.

Choice

Almost all political formations, barring Mayawati, want elections to take place at their assigned time in the first half of 2009. But that may not be possible. After its political mugging by the Left, the UPA does not look like it has the stamina to carry on for another year. If it does try, it could make the situation worse for itself. So, patchwork solutions are being attempted. In the coming weeks the Congress and the Left will try to pretend that their no-holds-barred battle never happened. Pranab Mukherjee’s declaration that the Congress would itself not like to proceed with a deal minus the Left’s support could be the beginning of an effort to revive the coalition. The effort would be to forget the August-December 2007 period.
There are straws in the wind to suggest that the Congress will again surprise the Left with a draft IAEA safeguards agreement that meets their somewhat extravagant demands. The Left will have the opportunity to reconsider. In the meantime, Mr. Karat may speak of the new Third Front and the Congress may dream of a modified UPA with Mulayam Singh, but time is not on their side.
As they confront the next general election, the future course of our political parties will be shaped by habit and vanities, rather than any deterministic unfolding of events. Choices exercised now could still make a difference, but just about.
This article was published in Mail Today January 16, 2008

The Left's Chimera

We have maintained from the very outset, that the Left alone has opposed the nuclear deal based on a coherent principle, though wrong-headed. However their opposition is so wrong-headed and blinkered that they are seriously endangering our national interest. The Left sees US as a major negative force in global politics and have hence opposed the nuclear deal because it will help bring India and the US closer together. The politburo statement of August 18 and the Left parties statement of August 7 make that clear.

Serving Chinese interests

This does not mean that the statement and the positions are well reasoned, they are not. They are a mishmash of blinkered ideological rants and cynically argued half-baked positions, some are not even based on fact. One lamentable conclusion does come through—the CPI(M) is not really concerned by India’s national interest, its idea of national interest is so distorted that it usually ends up serving China’s national interest. This is the Chinese take on the nuclear deal:

“Judging from the (Indo-US 123 Agreement) text, however, the US has made big concessions and met almost all Indian requests, including full supply of nuclear fuel to India and allowing it to dispose nuclear waste. India's right to continue conducting nuclear testing will depend on "circumstances". According to the text, if India can satisfactorily justify its nuclear testing, the US would acquiesce. That is, Washington has actually acknowledged India's right to retain nuclear testing......

....It is quite obvious that the US generosity in helping India develop nuclear energy is partly due to its hegemony idea, which made it regardless of others' opinions, and partly due to the intention of drawing India in as a tool for its global strategic pattern.” (“Prospects of Indian-US nuclear cooperation misty,” People’s Daily Online August 14, 2007)

So even the Chinese concede we have a good deal, even though they are clear that they don't like it.

Hyde Act Red Herring

Critics in the Left and the right are making a deliberate attempt to insinuate the Hyde Act into the deal. This act is US domestic legislation and binds the US Administration. The Bush team believes that the 123 Agreement it negotiated with India meets all the requirements of the act. There is a simple principle of international law, enshrined in the Vienna Convention on the Law of the Treaties, that an international agreement always trumps domestic legislation. Article 16 (4) of the Indo-US 123 Agreement notes, “This Agreement shall be implemented in good faith and in accordance with the principles of international law.” While the US and India have not ratified that convention, both have operationally abided by it because it codifies customary international law. International diplomacy would become infructous if states began to cite domestic law to overwhelm their international commitments. Article 27 of the treaty notes, " A party may not invoke an internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty. "

Misreading the documents

August 7 statement: “Serious concern had been expressed by the Left Parties about various conditions inserted into the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress. A number of them pertain to areas outside nuclear co-operation and are attempts to coerce India to accept the strategic goals of the United States. These issues are:

· Annual certification and reporting to the US Congress by the President on a variety of foreign policy issues such as India’s foreign policy being “congruent to that of the United States” and more specifically India joining US efforts in isolating and even sanctioning Iran [Section 104g(2) E(i)]

· Indian participation and formal declaration of support for the US’ highly controversial Proliferation Security Initiative including the illegal policy of interdiction of vessels in international waters [Section 104g(2) K]

· India conforming to various bilateral/multilateral agreements to which India is not currently a signatory such as the US’ Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), the Australia Group etc [Section 104c E,F,G]”

Are the US strategic goals towards India merely those ? All that one can see here is an effort to serve the Iranian and North Korean national interest, as well as that of any country that wishes to make missiles, chemical and nuclear weapons.

August 7 statement: “The termination clause is wide ranging and does not limit itself to only violation of the agreement as a basis for cessation or termination of the contract. Therefore, these extraneous provisions of the Hyde Act could be used in the future to terminate the 123 Agreement. In such an eventuality, India would be back to complete nuclear isolation, while accepting IAEA safeguards in perpetuity. Therefore, the argument that provisions of the Hyde Act do not matter and only 123 clauses do, are misplaced.”

My reading is that the termination issues are just two 1. a unilateral resumption of Indian nuclear tests (which incidentally is only implied and not mentioned in the Indo-US 123) and 2. As per the 123 Agreement’s Article XIV Section 3 which says the agreement will be at an end if India materially breaches the IAEA safeguards agreement. The article goes on to note that what constitutes the material breach will not be decided by the US, but the IAEA Board of Governors. What could be fairer and more reasonable ?

What it is all about

Why beat about the bush (pun unintended) and deconstruct a confused and confusing argument. Let’s ask the straightforward question : Does the US have an agenda in pushing the nuclear deal? Of course it does.

But that’s not quite the same thing as accepting that India will slavishly serve that agenda. What it will do, is what it has always done-- utilize the opportunity to move its own agenda forward. India has its own agenda and sees in the present global conjuncture an opportunity to strengthen its own position relative to the major powers.

What is remarkable about the Left’s self-view of India is as to how weak they think the country is. India with its nuclear-tipped armed forces, 8 per cent plus growth rate and burgeoning foreign exchange reserves has never been stronger than before. It has beaten back the challenge of US-led containment, as well as its most dangerous internal insurgencies. India may have been amenable to US tuition thrice in its history—when we became free and were reeling from the effects of partition, in 1962 when our forces were defeated by the Chinese and in 1991 when our economy crashed. But a glance back at all the instances will show that the Americans did not display and particular interest in “taking over” India. An India run from Washington is a chimera of the Left’s creation.

The only loophole I can see for the continuation of the Left's support for the United Progressive Alliance government is the paragraph four of the August 18 statement which notes,

“Till all the objections are considered and the implications of the Hyde Act evaluated, the government should not take the next step with regard to negotiating a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency.”

If the CPI(M) is willing to go through the motions of having these considered, it could raise its objections. The government has no doubt considered the implications of the Hyde Act. To suggest otherwise is to believe that the Manmohan Singh government, its negotiators and top nuclear scientists like Anil Kakodkar are working as agents of the US. But given the Left’s demonology anything is possible.

Incidentally, whose game is the CPI(M) playing by insisting that the deal be stopped before going to its logical stage? That is the point we will get an exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Once that happens, India will be able to make deals with countries like France and Russia who will not insist on the kind of conditionalities that are there in the Indo-US 123 Agreement. Again, incidentally, the US will give us in writing that it will not insist on a Right of Return clause in any NSG agreement.