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

G8, Global Warming and our Nuclear Future

When the Group of Eight summit began in Heilingdamm, Germany, everyone agreed that the big issue there would be climate change. With President George W Bush, the world’s most famous skeptic also making noises about climate change, nearly everyone agreed that climate change is a man-made phenomenon and we need to do something about it.

But there is no unanimity on what to do. Some want to banish automobiles, others want cutbacks in lifestyles, Germany and Japan want deeper mandatory cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. Bush’s modest proposal is to send the issue to a committee where developed polluters like the US will sit with the developing polluters like India and China to work out ways of dealing with global warming. Read more about my views on the issue here

The Two Headed Eagle Lands: Vladimir Putin's New Delhi visit

The Putin visit has transformed a relationship based on strategic-political congruence to one based on mutual economic gain. Hindustan Times January 24, 2007

At a press briefing in New Delhi in the late-Eighties, a Soviet academician, when pressed on the quality of technology in his country, said somewhat plaintively, “Surely a country that has flown the Buran cannot be backward.” In the field of space science and military technology, it was not. The Buran, which flew in October 1988, was a Soviet space shuttle that could be launched, manoeuvred and landed automatically. But the Buran never flew again. The country that launched it dissolved, in part because it was bankrupted by programmes like Buran, aimed at giving the USSR strategic parity with the United States. Like a nova, the Soviet Union briefly lit up the earth and suddenly dimmed.

Nearly 25 years later, the core of the USSR — Russia — is once again lighting up the sky. This time as an energy and commodities superpower. It ended 2006 with its eighth straight year of growth, averaging 6.7 per cent annually. Oil and commodity prices have played a key role in this, but investment growth and consumer spending are now beginning to kick in. Oil export earnings have allowed Russia to increase its foreign reserves from $12 billion in 1999 to some $315 billion at the end of 2006, the third largest in the world.

At the helm of affairs in Russia is a no-nonsense leader termed ‘ruthless’ and ‘cold’ by his adversaries, but hugely popular in his own country. Vladimir Putin became acting President on the last day of the 20th century, December 31, 1999. He was anointed President in May after the election and was re-elected for a second term in 2004. Over the years, Putin has undertaken a policy of concentrating political power in Kremlin and re-nationalising Russia’s oil and gas industries.

In international affairs, Putin has begun to re-establish the strong and independent role for Russia, once played by the Soviet Union, without its revolutionary or imperial pretensions. He has accepted American and European influence over the Baltic States, but sought to keep traditional Slavic States like Ukraine and Belarus under a close embrace. Till now, he has acquiesced with the US dominance in West Asia and gone along with American activities in Central Asia. Even in the case of Iran, he has chosen to avoid direct confrontation with the US. However, America’s self-inflicted infirmities in these regions have created a vacuum that Kremlin could once again seek to fill.

Russia’s resurgence under a powerful leader is good news for New Delhi. The Soviet collapse, formalised in 1991, took with it the scaffolding around India’s strategic architecture. The Soviet Union had been the inspiration for our planned economy, supplier of some 70 per cent of military hardware and an uncomplaining supporter of all our causes, from Kashmir to Bangladesh. Soviet weapons systems, provided at ‘friendship prices’, enabled India to field a robust military force that made us a regional power of sorts.

Despite the scramble to re-orient its foreign and security policies, New Delhi never had to go through what Russia did in the Nineties. Russia’s GDP halved, as did its government revenues. By the end of the decade, it witnessed an unprecedented decline in its standard of living, resulting in a sharp rise in poverty and mortality rates. Drastic privatisation led to the State’s vast resources being skimmed off by a small group of oligarchs linked to the Kremlin. Universities and institutions of higher learning, culture and publishing houses that were subsidised by the State found their budgets slashed, if not entirely eliminated. There was an enormous rise in the influence of the West and its institutions in Moscow.

India can perhaps no longer expect the kind of political relationship it had with the Soviet Union to be replicated with Russia. But then, New Delhi no longer needs uncritical friends. Its own foreign policy has been drastically overhauled, it has taken important initiatives with neighbours, made advances in its relations with the US, Europe and Japan, and developed an autonomous self-defence capability in the form of nuclear weapons. Most important, its booming economy has given it a self-assurance and standing that does not need the kind of props the Soviet Union once provided.

Russian trade and technology transfer relations with China are booming, but a demographically imploding Russia also fears for the future with an economically booming and demographically gigantic neighbour with whom it shares a 3,600 km border. Despite a shared culture, Russia’s relationship with the rest of Europe has been historically troubled and continues to be so. As for the US, the Russians remain suspicious of its agenda in the former Eastern Europe and Central Asia. So, while a shared history of good relations brings Russia and India closer, what makes for the glue today is that the two do not have any conflict of interest or suspicion of each other. Russia remains sensitive to Indian security concerns in its dealings with our neighbours, especially Pakistan; they are with us in trying to stabilise Afghanistan and Central Asia.

No matter how you look at it, Russia remains one of the more important world powers. It is the largest producer of natural gas and the second largest exporter of oil after Saudi Arabia. It is also the source of significant military and space technology. Though two-way trade between India and Russia is abysmal — Indian exports are $ 0.74 billion and imports $ 2.2 billion — the potential is enormous. The upturn in the Russian consumer-led expenditure offers huge opportunities for Indian firms in the pharma, textiles, IT and automobile sectors.

India failed to take advantage of the collapsing Russian military machinery, when some of its best scientists and engineers were hired by the West and China. Today, there is greater awareness that relations need to be based on joint development of technology, rather than simple export or licensed production of weapons systems. There is, of course, far greater interest in India today on Russian energy resources. The reassertion of Kremlin’s control over oil resources does give some advantage to State-owned Indian oil giants. But as of now, the Russian energy policy remains in a state of flux.

India’s new strategic architecture is based on shoring up its strategic autonomy in the economic and security field. To this end, it is pursuing policies to promote economic growth, resolve disputes with neighbours and strengthen relations with all significant nations of the world. This is not very different from what Russia is doing. A resurgent Russia has important implications for India’s regional and global policy, because it enhances the options available to New Delhi. Arguably, there is a closer identity of interests between the two on Central Asia, Iran and West Asia, than between New Delhi and Washington. With the US mired in Iraq and its stock in West Asia at a low, India can work with countries like Russia to provide a stabilising influence, especially in the vital Persian Gulf region.

New Delhi and Moscow have the opportunity, and an apparent inclination today, to rebuild their ties on a new basis, albeit on solidly established older foundations. In a study published in 1991, Santosh Mehrotra noted that while relations between India and the USSR were based on a “compatibility of strategic-political interests”, they also had a basis in strong mutual economic interest. New Delhi and Moscow have clearly understood that they still share important strategic interests. What they need now is to put in work to buttress this with mutually beneficial economic ties.