This is by far the best deal we could have got

The Indo-US nuclear deal, with its attendant ‘123 Agreement’, the India-specific International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards and Nuclear Suppliers Group waivers, need to be seen as building blocks of an extended process through which India is being brought into the mainstream of global politics.
Critics of the agreement have parsed every full-stop, comma and preposition to delineate its faults. They have sought to play up fears and put forward worst-case scenarios to undermine the agreement. In the coming years, as India intensifies its nuclear power programme in a big way, there will be many occasions when there will be differences of opinion on various clauses and agreements.
But let’s be clear that if the US has its interpretation of the 123 Agreement or the NSG waiver, so will India. More important, US generosity and Indian diplomatic tenacity has ensured that we have got as much of a level playing field as could have been provided for an outlaw country in the nuclear arena. From now onwards, its future will be shaped not by the fears of its critics but the practical use we make of the opportunities it provides.

Agreement

What does the agreement do? First, and most immediately, it will allow India to import natural uranium fuel to run our existing and planned nuclear power plants at full capacity. Second, it will allow us to resume collaboration with Canada to upgrade the CANDU design on which most Indian reactors are based. The Indian reactors are typically 220, or now 540 MW, while Canada has developed 740 MW reactors and has a 1,000 MW unit on the drawing board. Third, India can import modern units from France, Russia or the US, along with financing to set them up.
Fourth, Indian engineers and researchers will be permitted to work or collaborate with their counterparts in advanced nuclear nations without any special restrictions. Fifth, it provides India’s own industry such as Larsen & Toubro or the NPCIL the opportunity to become suppliers of key reactor items or even reactors. Sixth, it will enable India to acquire hitherto forbidden dual use technology which is critical for our ambitious space and high-tech industry programmes.
In the US, critics like Joseph Cirincione of the Center for American Progress and Daryl Kimball of the Arms Control Association have claimed that US-supplied uranium fuel would free up India’s limited uranium reserves for use in its nuclear weapons programme. The views of these professional non-proliferation lobbyists were echoed on Wednesday in the US Senate by Senators Byron Dorgan and Jeff Bingaman. This claim flies against the face of facts. If India was interested in fabricating nuclear weapons it could have done so in the 1960s, to start with. Even after its single test explosion in 1974, it did nothing.
There were two reasons why it was compelled to change course. First, New Delhi got information of the extent to which China was assisting Pakistan in making nuclear weapons. This was a shocking development, because no country in the world had knowingly transferred nuclear weapons technology to another — not the US to UK or France, nor Russia to China. As a recent issue of Physics Today has disclosed, not only did China transfer a weapons design in 1982, but it also tested a weapon that had been made in Pakistan in its own test site in 1990.
Second, following the end of the Cold War and the scare over Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions, the US began to move in a concerted way to lock up India’s options. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — which acknowledges nuclear weapons possession only by five big powers — was extended “in perpetuity”. India was not affected as we are not signatories. But the second step was more compelling — the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was approved. This would ensure that India and other threshold powers would never be able to test their weapons.
Though we categorically rejected the treaty, it decreed that unless forty threshold countries, which included India, Pakistan, Israel, also signed and ratified it, it could not come into force. The pressure for ratification became intense as all significant countries signed up, though some key countries like the US and China did not ratify it.

Mirror

These pressures pushed India to test. The first attempt by the P.V. Narasimha Rao government in December 1995 was foiled when the preparations were discovered, and the second came apart when Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s 13-day government collapsed in 1996. The tests were eventually carried out in May of 1998, a quarter century after the Pokhran I test.
This was hardly the behaviour of a power bent on making nuclear weapons. In any case even today if India did want to make lots of nuclear weapons, it could simply take its 14-odd power reactors out of the electricity grid and use them in a “low burn-up” mode to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.
There is a mirror-version of this critique in India. There are those who say that the agreement has taken away our right to test and that it will come in the way of constructing our nuclear arsenal. The test issue would be clear to anyone who has bothered to read the various documents associated with the deal — there is nothing in there which prevents India from testing. As for the weapons, the most knowledgeable authority — K. Santhanam of the DRDO who steered the programme to the tests at Pokhran II has made it clear in an article last year that India already has all the nuclear material it needs to construct a “credible minimum deterrent.” R. Chidambaram, the chief of the DAE at the time, too, stated last August that the tests met all the scientific community’s requirements for fabricating the arsenal that was needed.

Nuances

It doesn’t take much common sense to see that while we do have the sovereign right to test, there will be diplomatic consequences of the event. While countries like France and Russia may not react at all, the US will, though its position is not as absolute as it appears. On the face of it, the US is required to terminate cooperation and seek the return of its nuclear and non-nuclear material, technology or components.
Practically, however, Article 15(6) of the 123 Agreement would require the US party to compensate at “fair market value” of the equipment and pay for the costs of the removal. As Department of Atomic Energy Chairman, Anil Kakodkar has pointed out, “It is practically not possible [to remove reactor vaults, steam generators, coolant channels etc that make up a nuclear power station]. It is nuanced too by Article 14 which commits the US to consider the context of the termination. In other words, the US reaction would be graded if India resumed testing because of China or Pakistan
doing so.
There are bound to be geopolitical consequences of the agreement. The US has its reasons for what it has done, and India has its own for what it is doing. If there is congruence, well and good, if there isn’t well, the world will not end. But to assume that India is so beholden to the US that it will now be subservient to its interests is to be blind to contemporary reality in which India is the strongest economically and militarily that it has been in 60 years. As for the US, well it would be unfair to extrapolate from its present infirmities.
This article appeared in Mail Today October 3, 2008

India and the world will be reshaped by the nuclear deal

AT every stage opponents of the nuclear deal said it would not make it, be amended beyond recognition, or simply fail to pass muster. But two people — Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and US President George W Bush — insisted on pushing the deal based on a joint statement they had made on July 18, 2005. With the passage of the Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver, the Indo-US nuclear deal is through and it is set to shake not just the world, but Indian politics as well.
First, no matter what critics say, the agreement confers on India a de facto status of a nuclear weapons state. We can never be de jure because the NPT condition is that we should have tested our nuclear weapons before 1967. There is a special irony here, because the NSG was set up, as its own document states, “following the explosion in 1974 of a nuclear device by a non-nuclear-weapon State….”
The second, and perhaps the most important outcome, is that this represents India's entry into the world order as a significant power (Let’s not use the loaded “Great Power”). As long as India remained in an “outsider” category we were not quite the same as the others, no matter what they said, or we did. We could boast of our bomb, our BPO prowess, economic growth, invites to the G-8 meetings and candidacy for the UN Security Council seat and so on. But we were firmly at a different level from, say, China. They could import powerful computers, uranium, sensitive machine tools, software and components for satellites that were denied to us. The NSG waiver now lifts the embargo on India acquiring nuclear technology and, in some ways more important, the so-called dual use technologies.
Third, the deal finally buries the policy of equating India and Pakistan. For decades India has chafed at the world's tendency to lock India into a bipolar South Asian framework with Pakistan. Now, decisively, the rules have been changed for India, and pointedly not for Pakistan.
Fourth, while one aspect of this entry — our nuclear tests of 1998 — is tantamount to a gate-crash, it is by and large a friendly entry into the nuclear club. The opposition of Austria, Ireland, New Zealand — countries with no nuclear materials or technology but powerful anti-nuclear electorates — is history. Of greater significance is that countries as diverse as Russia, Brazil, Argentina, Japan, South Africa, Germany, France, Turkey joined the US in welcoming India into the club.
Fifth, the deal represents politics as being quintessentially the art of the possible. Both India and its interlocutors would have liked much more from each other, but chose pragmatically to be satisfied with a mutually beneficial compromise.

United States

The United States has played a key role. No other country, or a group of them, could have done what it did — get the 45-member NSG to stand its rules on its head. There is no conspiracy here. Geopolitically and economically, India is a good bet on which the US has invested in for decades, even when its main stakes were on Pakistan. US assistance in the 1960s enabled India's educational base which paid off in the 1990s in the form of the BPO business that has helped India to emerge as an IT powerhouse. For their part, Indians have voted for good relations with the US with their feet — migrating there in unprecedented numbers. In the process, the two countries have developed cross-stakes in each other.
But the US commitment is also driven by the rise of China. While the US and China have far deeper economic links with each other than the US and India have, the Americans remain deeply suspicious of Beijing, if only because of China’s opaque and authoritarian political system. But this should not be seen in old-fashioned balance of power terms where the combine is aimed at weakening China. The aim of America’s India policy is to hedge against things going wrong there, and in the process sending a signal to Beijing that the US is not entirely without options in the Asian region.

Left

How do I argue that this deal also marks a major shift in India's domestic politics? The Congress has had a historical love affair with the Left. In the 1930s the socialists and communists functioned as a ginger group known as the Congress Socialist Party. Later the CPI officially supported Indira Gandhi’s Left-leaning government. Though the CPI(M)’s politics was marked by anti-Congressism between 1970 and 1990, the party began to reluctantly see the Congress as the only bulwark against the BJP.
As the Third Front failed to jell and the Congress strength ebbed, the party became more domineering with the help of Left-leaning Congressmen like Arjun Singh within the Congress. As of 2004, they became positively obstreperous on a number of issues. For a while the Congress played on, mainly because Sonia Gandhi felt a special obligation to the Communists for backing her in the “foreign origin” controversy raised by the BJP.
But in the end, Sonia had to look after her party and government which was being undermined by the Left’s unrelenting hostility to the goals of her Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Finally, however, the issue was settled by Prakash Karat and Co overreaching themselves and forcing the Congress Party to break with the Left. A major role was played in this by Rahul Gandhi who has emerged as one of the strongest backers of the deal within the party and who is seeking to redefine the party’s post-Indira ideology. This process was begun by Rajiv Gandhi, but was short-circuited by his assassination.
The thralldom of the Left has acted as a brake on India’s march towards economic reform and growth. With an uncompromising leader like Karat in control, the chances of a rapprochement between the Left and the Congress is dim. This is all for the good for it compels the latter to swim in the deep end of the pool by itself and to build up a party that does not rely on the problematic support of the Left.

Politics

For a variety of reasons, none of them honourable, our Left and the BJP remain determined to oppose the nuclear deal. They have taken recourse to scare-mongering to persuade the public of their point of view. The BJP claims we will not have the right to test, as though such a right could have been incorporated in a civil nuclear agreement, leave alone be granted by the NSG.
The Left claims that India has sold out to the American camp; well, they have been saying this since Independence. Recollect, when India became free in 1947, B.T. Ranadive, one of Karat’s heroes, claimed that freedom was a sham and Jawaharlal and the Congress were just lackeys of the imperialists. They were wrong then, they are wrong now.
The set of agreements that comprise the Indo-US nuclear deal are not static documents tantamount to the Scripture. They are living products of international politics and, in this sense, will mutate and reshape themselves in the future, depending on the use or misuse they are put to. As documents, they are in themselves worth only their weight of the paper they are written on, unless there is a congruence of interests, and mutuality of benefit, among the signatories — India, US, the IAEA, and the constituents of the NSG.
This appeared in Mail Today September 10, 08

Running aground at the NSG

My simple view on the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Indo-US nuclear agreement: First, the entire agreement is premised on the NSG community accepting that India is a de facto, not de jure nuclear weapons state. In other words 1) India has not and will not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and 2) that it has demonstrated that it possesses nuclear weapons and intends to retain them. The challenge for the NSG is to skirt these two issues in a manner that enables nuclear trade with India and also ensures that nothing in the process goes against their non-proliferation commitments. As of now they seem unable to do so.
You may say that India is demanding to have its cake and eat it too. Possibly, but that is what the so-called Nuclear Weapons States under the NPT do. India has stayed out of the NPT and has broken no international agreement in testing or possessing nuclear weapons. The 123 Agreement between India and the US has successfully dealt with the issue, as has the India-specific IAEA agreement by the simple device of working on the agreement in the narrow sense—dealing with nuclear trade issues rather than the larger question of nuclear weapons possession by India.
The NSG purists however want to get in through the backdoor what was kept out of the front.
For a more detailed analysis, you must see Siddharth Varadajan in The Hindu

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

Endgame hurdles dog the Indo-US nuclear deal

THE END game has gone on for so long, that one would be tempted to say that it has become a game of its own. That there is still some life in the Indo- US nuclear deal was apparent by the buzz created last week, when the Samajwadi party cited former President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam’s advocacy of the deal, to say they were willing to reconsider their opposition to it. Given its single- issue approach to politics, which does not include an automatic distaste for things American, the change signifies little for the party, but it has larger implications for national politics.
Among other things, it weakens the CPI( M) General Secretary Prakash Karat’s claim — untested on the floor of the house — that the majority of the Parliament is against the deal. With 36 seats in the present house, the SP has nearly as many members of parliament as the CPI( M) itself. The Left is now reported to be readying to have yet another internal discussion on the deal. The Samajwadi shift could be used by them to modify their senseless blockade, though this is unlikely. The UPA- Left coordination committee meeting on May 28 could well be the final meeting on the deal. Optimists, and I am one of naïve lot, believe that the deal will still go through the Indian political hurdles. But that will only be the first of three endgames. The next will be with the International Atomic Energy Agency whose board of governors will meet on June 2. While India has a draft agreement with the IAEA in its pocket, that does not mean that the board of governors will automatically accept it. And then comes the clean exemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel on its rule against civil nuclear trade with a country that has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. This will not be a best of three outcome: India must win all three games to get the nuclear deal through. While we have the secretary general of the IAEA Mohammed El Baradei in our corner in the world nuclear body, as per agreement the United States must push our case in the NSG. The problem is that with the Bush Administration in its lameduck phase, countries which may have otherwise gone along with the US in the NSG could now become a problem. There is a blithe assumption in some quarters in the country that IAEA and NSG approval will be a cakewalk. But we could be in for a rude shock. In the case of the IAEA, we already have a draft agreement, but when we go to the NSG we may find that in addition to the conditions the US has made in the 123 Agreement, we are asked to make commitments to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the proposed Fissile Material Cut off agreement being negotiated in Geneva.

Mainstream

But it is not the endgame alone that should interests us, but the game itself. Given his background as an arch- nationalist, Kalam only told us half the truth when he said that the country needed to import natural uranium to keep its nuclear power programme going. “ Our uranium reserves are limited. We will need a certain amount of uranium to attain the next stage in the fuel cycle producing energy on thorium which is available in abundance in India,” he said. Atomic Energy chief Anil Kakodkar made the same point at the same meeting at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai. He pointed out that India was no longer “ technology limited” but “ raw material limited.” This is something of an understatement. India may boast of its small nuclear power station expertise, but the fact of the matter is that we have been stunted by the embargoes on us. As for the fast breeder, it offers us great promise of energy security, but there are still major technological challenges that must be overcome. The reality is that India also needs to be part of the world technology mainstream. This is important not only because it fertilizes your own endeavours, but because an open market is a source of cheaper and better components and technology. And surely if our fast breeder is a success, we would like to market the technology around the world. But that will not be possible as long as there are NSG restrictions on our civil nuclear trade. Let us also be humble and accept that we are unlikely to have some unique technology that will compel the NSG to come to terms with us. In the long debate over the desirability or otherwise of the deal, one fact that has been spun around is that nuclear power will be able to fulfil only a small fraction of our total demand, say 12 per cent by 2030. ( It is 3 per cent now) The point is that the 12 per cent could make the difference between a high and a low economic growth rate. When shortage occurs, say in Delhi currently, it is not the total power output that matters, but the shortage which could be of the order of 5- 10 per cent.

Security

So the marginal unavailability will be more important than the percentage it represents. In addition, it will also come as clean energy. Already there is considerable pressure on India and China to undertake mandatory emission controls in the post- Kyoto climate control treaty. By now it should be clear from the statements of people like former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra that the Indo- US nuclear deal will have no negative impact on India’s nuclear weapons programme. How could it ? Western critics are not wrong when they say that by being permitted to import natural uranium for civil nuclear power, will enable India to use its limited resources for military purposes. As for nuclear tests, no agreement in the world would permit India the right to conduct them, and, frankly, in such matters relating to national security interests, you do not go around seeking permission from anyone.

Tactics

The problem with a section of domestic opinion is that they think that India is somehow entitled to have the nuclear trade embargo lifted. But we are not dealing with a legal regime alone, but also a cartel like the NSG which functions on the plane of international politics. Many of its members have not quite gotten over India’s successful defiance of the non- proliferation order and building nuclear weapons. There are, after all, 184 countries who have decided to accept what Indians feel is a second class status, and signed the NPT as non- nuclear weapon states. These are also the countries that form the bulk of the 45- nation NSG. They do not take too kindly to India’s pretensions. Many resent what they see as New Delhi’s tactic of using American clout to crash into the club. Some are rich and not particularly amenable to US pressure anyway. So, India’s “ entitlement mode” negotiation may not have much traction with the NSG. Instead, we may need to more substantially address the non- proliferation sentiment by accepting some kind of commitment to the CTBT and the FMCT. In the end, politics, rather than entitlement, is what will determine the outcome.
This article first appeared in Mail Today May 14, 2008

Don't miss the nuclear train, there won't be another for a long time to come

Once upon a time in another continent, there was a country, almost as large as India, which was rich and prosperous. Between 1880 and 1916, Argentina was among the top ten nations of the world, a potential great power. Since then it has been steadily declining, with its politics veering between conservatism, military rule and radical populism.
Even today, the country possesses abundant resources and a well educated and talented population, but it remains a potential great nation, rather than an actual one. Somehow, it seems to have missed all the chances that it got in the past century to get back on the track to greatness. India’s story is an older one, going back more than three centuries. But these days we, too, seem to be resembling luckless Argentina, rather than our northern neighbour China which, in the short space of three decades, has nearly restored its status as a great world power.
There is a trite assumption that “Shining” or “Incredible” India, one with a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, are inevitable; indeed, in some measure, we are already “there.” The reality, if we are to learn from history, could be different. With the world’s largest population of illiterate, ill and hungry people, we are only part way through the journey. Our recent successes could turn out to be a peak, rather than an upward trend line.

Circumstance

Looked at from another angle, the health of the country’s political system and processes does not appear too good. First, India’s political system seems to be suffering from a serious dysfunction. With none of the three major political formations — the Congress, BJP and the Left —being able to establish themselves, the country is being pulled apart by smaller ethnic and caste leaders whose narrow focus not only does not take into account “India” and issues related to it, but actually undermines the idea of India. Second, the administrative system of the country has become so corrupt and inefficient that the delivery of public health services, education, and even basic law and order does not exist for the poorest half of the population. Third, the inefficiencies associated with the Indian political and administrative system have led to a collapse of rural infrastructure and the creation of shoddy urban conglomerations which are, in some measure because of factors 1 and 2, becoming ungovernable. Fourth, India’s sclerotic political and administrative system is so caught up with simply surviving that it has ceased to be effective in solving outstanding political problems, or problems that are emerging. So negotiations with separatists in Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland, Assam, or with the Maoists in central India, seem to be trapped on a treadmill.
Just how does the Indo-US nuclear deal connect to these varied set of issues? It is not as if the nuclear deal will resolve all of India’s problems and make us a superpower. What the deal and the way it has been handled does is to tell us a great deal about India’s self-doubts and uncertainties, and indeed points to the hubris that could bring our ambitions low. Beyond the nuts and bolts of civil nuclear cooperation, the deal represents a major effort by the leading nations of the world to bring India into the mainstream of international politics — somewhat akin to the exercise that took place in the 1970s with the People’s Republic of China. Fitting India into the world’s non-proliferation system, whose lynch-pin is the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is seen as an act that will promote global stability.

Opposition

The heavens will not come down if the deal does not go through. We can bungle on as we have. But it will leave uncomfortable questions about India’s ability to discriminate between what is good and what is bad for itself; and of the ability of its political system to work the international system. By all accounts, the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency have yielded on every single count raised by India, yet a significant chunk of our politicians, driven by short-term and narrow considerations, are unable to accept this.
Of the two main opponents, it is easier to understand, though not condone, the Left’s opposition. It is based on an irrational, and untenable belief that the US is the leader of “world imperialism”. The problem with the Indian Left and its leadership is that they are fighting a war on another planet. In that world, the Vietnam war is still continuing, Che and Fidel’s revolution has swept Latin America and the Soviet Union is flourishing. Unfortunately for the Left, in our world, a united Vietnam, has followed China’s “market socialism”, become a new tiger economy, and is a member of the Association of South East Asian Nations, a once reviled grouping of “imperialist lackeys”. The Soviet Union has ceased to exist and Fidel has just retired as the head of a nation he has left decrepit.
The Bharatiya Janata Party’s opposition is completely spurious, and somewhat cynical, because it has no bugbear like “imperialism” holding it back, neither is it opposed to the idea of having the US take the lead in lifting the nuclear embargo on India. The BJP, which termed the US India’s “natural ally” and whose current prime ministerial hopeful once pressed his government to send troops to Iraq, can hardly oppose the deal on the same grounds as the Left. The BJP says it will get a better deal. But, as Strobe Talbott has pointed out, it was willing to settle for less than 50 per cent of what the Congress has got. In these circumstances to argue that a “majority” of Parliament is opposed to the deal is superficial.
India certainly needs to be grateful to the US for pushing the deal to the extent it has. No doubt the US has its own interests in mind, but India is not a callow new nation, or a failing state which can be manipulated to some nefarious end. The 123 Agreement with the US and the India-specific IAEA safeguards agreement have shown that our officials, if properly directed, are capable of not only preserving, but furthering the country’s best interests.
As it is, in its totality, the deal is between the NSG cartel and India. The 123 Agreement, the Hyde Act, the India-specific safeguards agreement are all enabling processes. The actual agreement will be the “clean exemption” that the Nuclear Suppliers Group would have to give India to enable all its 45 members to resume civil nuclear trade with India. For a time the NSG was a western grouping. But over time it has gathered strength and drawn in countries like Russia, South Africa, Brazil and China and become a true international cartel.

Wishful thinking

There is an argument that, given the trends, the US and the world community will be happy to offer the deal to India at a later date. Perhaps they will, perhaps they won’t. True, having established several benchmarks, it will be easy to pick up the thread of the negotiations subsequently. But consider two issues: First, there is nothing left to negotiate. Everything that India could have conceivably wanted has been delivered. Second, it is not impossible that we can once again arrive at a conjuncture where we can get a friendly US president, an acquiescent US Congress, and a cooperative head of the IAEA to offer us a deal. But it is improbable. History does not usually repeat itself. In the coming decades we are unlikely to have another system-destructive US president like George W Bush, who was willing to bend the NPT system, as no other US leader would have been willing to, so as to accommodate India.
This article first appeared in Mail Today March 12, 2008

One step forward, two steps back

In contrast to Lenin's dictum, "Two steps forward, one step back," the Left has succeeded in inflicting a wound on itself by its maneuvering on the Indo-US nuclear deal. Its concession allowing the government to begin negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency means it has abandoned its stand demanding that the government do nothing to "operationalise" the deal. In fact, all that is left to operationalise the deal from the Indian side is to work out an India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Thereafter, the US will take the agreement to the Nuclear Suppliers Group and seek an exemption from its rule barring trade with countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Only the US can do that,India is not an NSG member (as yet). But India can, and has been talking to individual NSG members for the past year or so, though there is no public record of the discussions. Formally, it is the US that will have to approach the NSG and seek, as India has demanded, a "clean exemption" ie, an unconditional one. This is not likely to be easy because the non-proliferationists in the US and Europe are mobilising their efforts to ensure that an NSG exemption is conditional on India's agreeing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and commit itself to the Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty, if and when the latter is negotiated.Conditions are likely to be political dynamite in India and will be unacceptable to New Delhi.

The IAEA agreement is not likely to be too complicated because it will be based, as we have noted before, on the basic IAEA safeguards document relevant, INFCIRC/66. The Left has demanded, and the government has conceded, that the safeguards agreement will placed before the Left-UPA committee for approval. Just how this highly technical document be judged on by a political committee is not clear.The Left could insist on demanding provisions that are available for the de jure nuclear weapons states (under the NPT provision of having conducted a nuclear test before January 1, 1967). However, this would be a deal-breaker. Because while the US is willing to give India a de facto nuclear weapons state status, it simply does not have the power to turn the clock back and give India a de jure one. Seeking parity for the sake of parity will be a counter-productive move.
Whatever it is, Comrade Prakash Karat has given special interviews to indicate that there is no change in the Left's policy. That is hard to accept considering that he had declared that any step to operationalise the deal would lead to a withdrawal of the Left's support.
My guess is that the government is readying for an election by March-April and at the appropriate moment, it will move to clinch the deal and precipitate an election.

Bitter October

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, say reports, is a bitter man. He feels particularly let down by allies, since he expected that the opposition would be unsparing towards the Indo-US nuclear deal anyway. There are two things he can do—swallow his bitterness like a kaliyug Shiva and stay in office, or spit it out and quit. Either way, there are implications for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. He may not be much of a political heavy-weight, but he is clearly indispensible for the Congress president who does not trust a Pranab Mukherji and is not likely to hand the government over to the lightweight and incompetent Shivraj Patil.

But the fact is that there is an irretrievable breakdown in the relations between the Prime Minister and the Left on one hand, and between the PM and his coalition allies who finally slipped the knife into his back earlier this month. There is, no doubt, an element of unhappiness with Ms Sonia Gandhi as well who went along with Lalu, Karunanidhi, Pawar and Co in the process, resulting in the current impasse. Worse, a day or so later on October 12, during the Hindustan Times conference, when asked as to who she depends on for political advice, named her son, daughter and son-in-law and did not even make a passing reference to her prime minister.

The Left played dirty by going along with the deal through 2005, 2006 and most of 2007 and pulled the rug under his feet after the enormous achievement of the Indian “123 Agreement” which is extremely favourable to us. His allies—Lalu, Karunanidhi and Pawar—not only went along with him, but were represented or actually part of the Union Cabinet that approved every step of the negotiations, and finally endorsed the “123 Agreement.” On July 25, a combined meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security and the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs okayed the 123. Incidentally, that very evening, Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechury and CPI leader D. Raja were given a special presentation on the deal by officials at the Prime Minister’s residence. There are no reports of the Left having declared themselves dead-set against the deal at this stage. On August 19, according to The Hindu:

The key constituents of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) on Sunday night threw in their lot with coalition chairperson Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and expressed full confidence in their ability to address “all legitimate concerns” voiced by the Left parties.

The goings on of October 9/10 therefore were a surprise to Singh, though they should not have been. The allies may claim that it was one thing to give the endorsement above, quite another to have the cold water of an election thrown on their face. But the fact is that if they had held their nerve, they could have emerged winners, instead of the dispirited and confused bunch they appear now.

Now there are straws in the wind to suggest that the UPA is recovering some of the coherence it lost at that time. This is apparent from the outcome of the latest meeting of the UPA-Left committee on October 22. Prior to the meeting there were a lot of bombastic declarations demanding that the government announce the termination of the Indo-US nuclear deal, or leave it to the next US administration-- statements tantamount to a Congress party surrender. But the outcome of the meeting was anodyne, suggesting that it was the Left that backed off. The conclusion of Monday meeting declared that:

Issues currently before it [the committee] would be addressed in an appropriate manner and the operationalisation of the deal will take into account the Committee’s findings.

This is actually a restatement of the positions the committee has taken from the very outset and its reiteration indicates that the Congress is not budging and the Left could be up the creek without a paddle.

Reports in several papers now claim that the time frame of the nuclear deal will not be adhered to as regards India-specific safeguards negotiations with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) scheduled for October, negotiations with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) slated for November and taking the deal to the U.S. Congress in January 2008.

Nicholas Burns seems to have repeated this view to a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Tuesday. According to Reuters, Burns is reported to have said that the US was approaching election time and that it was tough to pass legislation at such times. Adding,

We don't have an unlimited amount of time...We'd like to get this agreement to the United States Congress by the end of the year.

He is right, but the technical timeline—which means the time required to get the technicalities of the deal worked out—actually extends all the way to the end of 2008. However, as the months pass, there is an inevitable loss of momentum and the chances of it being taken up by the Congress recede. The steps needed now are for the approval of an India-specific safeguards agreement by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Between you and me, this agreement is more-or-less ready and could be approved within a week of India’s request. While there is a formal 45-day process to summon the Board of Governors meeting, the IAEA chief Mohammed El Baradei is backing the deal and will provide a short cut.

There is an NSG meeting scheduled in November and it is possible that the US will get pre-approval from their colleagues based on the prospective IAEA safeguards agreement. The NSG approval will not be simple because the members want to connect it to the Fissile Material Cut Off and Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. But a measure sandwiching the INFCIRC/ 66, the IAEA's basic standard agreement with some language on the FMCT and CTBT could pass.So the whole process can be telescoped into about a month. As for the US Congress, mid-2008 can be seen as the outside limit of prudent planning.

There has been some talk about how the Democratic party would look at the deal. The Hyde Act, that enabled the 123 Agreement to be arrived at was passed by an overwhelming vote of the US Congress. Observers expect that the non-proliferationists in the new putative Clinton Administration would make life difficult for India and Hillary has already signaled her views through an article in Foreign Affairs, saying she would push for the CTBT in 2009. However these observers do not realize that countries like the US do not make policy moves out of whim but considerable cogitation and analysis. What Bush II did was based on what Bush I had initiated. In addition, he built on the goodwill generated by Bill Clinton’s overtures to India. The Indo-US nuclear deal is part of Washington’s strategic grand design. India may be a cog in this, but an it is an increasingly important one.

So now we need to look at the political timeline here in India. Given the public postures, there is no chance that the Left will approve of the deal. So at some point the UPA must say they are going ahead, and when they do so, the Left will announce a withdrawal of support. The government need not fall immediately, but it will begin the clock ticking for the next elections. My guess would be that it could well be after the Gujarat elections whose results should be known by December 23. This times well with the end of the winter session of Parliament. So the technical and political timelines can be made to intersect in early January, leading to elections in May.

Almost every election in India is a paradigm shift and so will the next one be. The best the Indian people can hope for is the emergence of one, two or three fronts that have some ideological coherence and are coalitions with some dharma, not just opportunistic alliances that are used as stepping stones to political power.

Mysterious goings on in New Delhi

What is happening with the Indo-US nuclear deal ? The prime minister and Sonia Gandhi’s statements on Friday have set the cat among the pigeons. Speaking at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit , the PM said: “If the deal does not come through, it will be a disappointment. But sometimes in life you have to live with them. It is not the end of life.” Sonia Gandhi, too said that the Congress would try to address the concerns of its allies and the party “The dharma of coalition is to work together, try and understand and accommodate each other’s view.”
In our view, this seeming flip-flop of the Congress party and the government can be understood if you believe, as I do, that there is now a deal within a deal. In other words, the Congress and the Left have struck a deal to back off from their confrontation and arrive at a workable compromise that will see the deal move on to its logical culmination, perhaps on a slightly delayed time line. This is no doubt the achievement of Pranab Mukherji, Lalu Yadav, Sitaram Yechury and Sharad Pawar. So the process will involve formal agreement in the Left-UPA committee that is supposed to look into the deal. You need to read between the lines to get the Left's true reaction. Note, Mr. Karat has not said anything.

There are several straws in the wind to suggest that. First, a CPI(M) politburo meeting scheduled for October 18 has been postponed. Second, speaking at an Indian Express function, Kapil Sibal says that the Left has accepted the primacy of the 123 Agreement over the Hyde Act. “The Left has now agreed to the position that where there is a conflict between the Hyde Act and the 123 agreement, the 123 agreement prevails. That position has been agreed to.”

Till now the Left has been arguing that they are not against the deal per se, but the Hyde Act that allegedly commits India to follow the US foreign policy agenda. That this was factually untrue mattered little because most of us believed that the Left’s positions were motivated by blind anti-Americanism rather than reason. Once reason comes into play, and there are grounds to believe that it has, the Left’s loses its sharp edge.

My guess-- and this is a guess-- is that we will now have a compromise formula, where the Left will endorse this point, and in return the government may go along with a Parliament statement or resolution that purports to defang the toothless Hyde Act.

In the meantime, behind the scenes negotiations are going on with the International Atomic Energy Agency for the India-specific safeguards which Dr. Mohammed El Baradei keeps on saying are not that much of a problem."We are ready. I don't think we would take very long. It would be weeks, not more than weeks." My own belief is that some behind-the-scenes negotiations have already taken place based on what diplomats cutely term "non-papers"-- working drafts which are not attributable to any government or institutions. So, there would be a show of formal consultation, but the agreement would be done in a matter of a week or so after India gives its go-ahead. As for the NSG, that as per agreement, is America’s baby, though we will have to put in effort as well, but behind the scenes.

It is too early to say that all's well that ends well. But there should be no doubts that relations between Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) General Secretary who forced the confrontation and the Prime Minister are irreparably damaged because of the note of bitterness that they brought into the issue. Usually in politics these things don't matter, but both are ideologues in their own way, and it does tend to matter.

The El Baradei visit

With Congress chief Sonia Gandhi signaling her party’s determination to stay the course on the Indo-US nuclear deal, it is only a matter of time, before the government formally declares that it is negotiating with the International Atomic Energy Agency. But as of now, given the Left ultimatum on freezing action on the Indo-US nuclear deal, the government remains committed to avoiding any formal negotiations with the international body. Last week, the government denied reports that it had been given a draft safeguards agreement by the IAEA. A DAE press note did obliquely confirm that it was talking to the IAEA when it noted that it was “not holding any formal negotiations with the IAEA.” No formal negotiations with the IAEA, get it ?

But the next meeting of the UPA-Left committee has now been put to October 22. This is four days after the scheduled meeting of the CPI(M) Politburo. Is there any significance to the date. Well, for one thing, it seems to suggest that the two sides are giving one more chance to each other for reaching a compromise. Had it not been so, they would have announced a divorce right now. But then, neither of the parties are ready for elections. In fact, no one is. But, the Left has to consider the sorry state of its party unit in Kerala, and the situation in West Bengal. In the latter state, it has to contend with the possibility of a Trinamul-Congress alliance, an alienation of the Muslims (one-quarter of the state's population) brought on by the Nandigram and Rizwanur episodes, as well as the outbreak of protests against the Public Distribution System in the state. This is not a happy congruence.

So, the three day visit of International Atomic Energy Director-General Mohammed El Baradei is more likely to be an occasion to fine-tune relations between India and the international nuclear watch-dog who has been a strong and early supporter of the Indo-US nuclear deal. As it is the ostensible purpose of his visit is a technical one to speak at an energy conference, visit a nuclear research facility in Mumbai and meet with Indian nuclear officials. Sources in the government acknowledge that informal negotiations are taking place between the government and the IAEA for the nuclear safeguards agreement. But they say that this is happening in Vienna, and Dr. El Baradei is not involved in the nuts and bolts of the agreement as of now. The safeguards agreement is likely to follow the one that has been worked out for the two 1000MW reactors that India is getting from Russia at Kudankulam, so there is not that much work required for the agreement.

Last month, Indian officials held informal talks with the IAEA at the sidelines of the annual Board of Governors meeting in Vienna, but denied that it was conducting any formal negotiations. But there was enough in statements of ministers to suggest that that was indeed what was happening.

In addition to a safeguards agreement that will place eight Indian nuclear reactors under a perpetual inspection regime of the IAEA, India is committed to signing an additional protocol with the IAEA for stepped up inspections on all the sites that will be safeguarded. However, officials say that the actual timeline on the additional protocol is more open-ended. The Hyde act only requires India to have made "substantial progress" towards negotiating the additional protocol and there is no requirement to have one before the deal enters into force. (Thanks to Sid Varadarajan for this and the following)

The sequencing of the operationalsation of the Indo-US nuclear deal now is the following:

1. India negotiates text of safeguards agreement with IAEA secretariat

2. Copy of final text goes to Nuclear Suppliers Group

3. NSG changes rules

4. US Congress approves 123

5. India signs safeguards agreement with IAEA

6. Eventually an additional protocol is concluded and enters into force.

But this is the technical time-line. There is another, a political clock, that has already begun ticking towards another general election.

Nuclear deal: Future tense, but the show goes on

This post has been revised on September 22

You can already see the nods and winks going on between New Delhi and Washington, as well as the Nuclear Suppliers Group, and the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. While no one is saying anything officially, and taking care not to show any further “operationalisation” of the Indo-US nuclear deal, there is clearly action taking place behind the scenes. The government is compelled to act as it does because the Left, particularly the CPI(M) seems determined to scuttle it. Writing in Hindustan Times, Nilova Roy Chaudhury says that the government is determined to wind up the IAEA negotiations by October and seek the NSG waiver thereafter.

After agreeing to be part of a committee that would discuss the Left’s concern, Mr. Prakash Karat, the CPI(M) General Secretary undercut that position by declaring at a public rally in New Delhi on September 18 that the government now postpone action on the deal for six months “Otherwise, there would be a political crisis in the country. We do not want that.” This is a “too clever by half” kind of a statement designed to scuttle the deal, and it is unlikely to wash.

There are two time-lines at work on the nuclear deal-- one is a technical one, and the other political. A senior official familiar with the negotiations told me last week that India will have to meet these two objectives in the coming month or two “because President Bush is unlikely to have any power to influence Congress beyond February or March this year”. Otherwise the process to spill over into next summer, which in effect means 2009-- since 2008 is a Presidential Election year in the US. This would put the entire deal in a limbo, the more likely scenario is that the two countries will seek to push ahead within this year. This is likely to be the subject of the expected meeting between External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherji and his US counterpart Condeleezza Rice later this month on the margins of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

The technical time-line requires India to negotiate its India specific additional protocol and safeguards agreement with the IAEA. While India would be working on existing templates on both agreements, there are key differences that require extensive negotiations. The IAEA has an additional protocol in its books since 1997, but this relates to tightening inspection procedures for non-nuclear weapons states (NNWS). In other words the IAEA procedures relate to preventing NNWS from making nuclear weapons. But India already has nuclear weapons, and the US has accepted this and so the India-specific agreement has to reflect this. The safeguards agreement will be easier and can be based on the agreement that India has signed with the IAEA for the two Koodankulam reactors being built with Russian help.

Only when India has these two agreements can it go the NSG and request a rule change. According to an official, the procedure here could be “a simple line added to the existing guidelines or it could be a more complicated agreement.” He said that it was difficult to predict how the 45-nation body will respond to India’s request for an unconditional exception to its rule barring trade with countries that have not signed the NPT. India can negotiate behind the scenes with the IAEA and NSG, but at some point it must arrive at an open agreement with them. And that is the point the political time-line kicks in. As per the agreement, it is the US that has to get India the exemption from the NSG, so India need not directly interface with the cartel till the very end. On Friday (September 21) the US briefed 100 officials from 33 member countries. Richard Stratford, Director at the Office of Nuclear Energy Affairs in the US State Department told Press Trust of India "We are also putting forth India's case for clean, unconditional exemption and we are trying hard on that."

At any sign that New Delhi is negotiating with the IAEA or NSG on the nuclear deal, the 60-member Left group is committed to withdrawing its support from the UPA government leaving it with a minority in the Lok Sabha. The government may not fall immediately, but its days would be numbered, with both the Left and the Congress party seeking to maneuver themselves into an advantageous position vis-à-vis the General Election that will follow. But now there seems to be some rethinking going on in the CPI(M). The enigmatic statements of 94-year old Jyoti Basu seems to suggest that the party will climb down after the meeting of its politburo and the central committee at the end of the month in Kolkata.

After reaching agreement with the US on the “123 Agreement” New Delhi was to work out a safeguards agreement and an India-specific additional protocol with the IAEA, and thereafter obtain the approval of the 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group to amend its guidelines to permit nuclear trading with India. After these benchmarks are reached, the US Congress would again take a “yes” or “no” vote to make the deal operational.

Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi

The reason why Latin, a now extinct language, is still used in some form or the other, is because it has a remarkable facility for stating an issue in the most direct and coherent manner. That is why it is a favourite of lawyers and judges. The title of my previous blog, too, was a Latin phrase. Perhaps this is an effort to try and be as clear as possible on the vexed matter of the Indo-US nuclear deal.
Because the deal involves an American statute (the Hyde Act), a technical agreement, the Indo-US 123 Agreement, safeguards and an additional protocol with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines, it is easy to mislead the man-on-the-street. A number of politicians and commentators have taken recourse to selective reading of the text or giving an unconscionable spin to phrases and clauses. In some cases it is a case of suggestion of a falsehood leading to the suppression of truth (the meaning of the phrase we have cited).
To my mind two articles on the deal in The Hindu bring this out. The first was one by Brahma Chellaney, a commentator on strategic affairs and author of a study on the earlier Tarapur agreement. The second is a rejoinder by Kapil Sibal, a minister in the UPA government and a noted lawyer. Read both for yourself to understand what I am trying to get at.

Some more thoughts on the India-US nuclear deal

The slow and deliberately choreographed movement towards revealing the text of the Indo-US 123 Agreement has now reached it’s penultimate stage. Next week, in all likelihood, it will be made available to all. The Indian government has worked to build up opinion across the board through selective briefings (voluntary disclosure: I was in one of them). Two important public briefings have also taken place in New Delhi ( you will have to look in the press briefings for July 27, 07 for the text) and Washington DC. In New Delhi, National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan, Department of Atomic Energy Chief Anil Kakodkar and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon were the briefers, in Washington DC it was US Undersecretary of State Nick Burns.

They are targeting the political class which has been largely ignorant of the issues involved. The Markey riposte was par for the course for the "non-proliferation ayatollahs" in the US. In India, the Left’s reaction has been muted, because it knows that only by bringing down the government can the agreement be blocked. The BJP’s ‘sensible’ wing is for the agreement, though as of now they have merely commended the government’s negotiating prowess. But it has been equally important to get the Congress party on board, and that has been done in Congress-style, by a briefing to the Congress Working Committee and a congratulatory resolution hailing the PM.

There is still a great deal of confusion about the nature of the deal. Let us take up the issues one by one.

Prior Consent for reprocessing: The US has provided such consent to the EURATOM and Japan, and now India. The essence of the arrangement is the belief that leakage of material in the reprocessing area is a far more serious problem than a breach in other safeguards procedures. They are based around the “timely warning” principle. This is what a US State Department publication has to say on this, “ While the assurances of peaceful use that safeguards provide cannot be absolute, it is vital that such safeguards be as robust and effective as possible, for the risk of detection makes diversion more difficult and helps deter the pursuit of illicit nuclear programs. It is essential to the integrity and the objectives of the NPT regime that safeguards be able to provide timely warning of diversion, enabling an effective international response to be mounted.”

Towards this end, India offered the US a dedicated national facility, that will not only come under IAEA safeguards, but one that that will, be built to their specifications. When a batch of US-origin fuel is ready for reprocessing, India will call for a meeting, which the US will have to convene within 6 months, and the modalities and safety issues will be discussed. The US will okay the plan, or provide reasons as to why it cannot do so, all within the space of another year. The presumption is that subject to safety and security and non-diversion, the reprocessing permission will be available.

The fact is that such a situation remains in the realm of the future as of now. India will first have to acquire a US reactor, fuelled by US-origin fuel and run it till it accumulates a certain amount of spent fuel so as to reprocess it. An optimistic process would see this happening in 10-15 years from now. In the meantime, India will have time to build the promised facility and build up US confidence levels that the procedures in the plant are transparent and diversion proof.

Termination of cooperation: The US is bound by law to terminate cooperation with India if it conducts a nuclear test. As the Prime Minister told the CWC, India retains the right to conduct nuclear tests, just as the US reserves the right to react to an Indian test as per its laws. At the same time the US has agreed that it is committed to the “continuous operation of reactors” it may supply. In other words, it will not block India’s efforts to keep the reactor going with fuel from other sources. In that sense, the termination of the Indo-US cooperation will really mean the cessation of Indo-US cooperation, not that with the NSG. In any case there could be loopholes here too, because the Bush administration is no admirer of the Comprehensive Test Ban and would not like to hold the sword of sanctions over India should, say, China resume testing, or more piquantly, the US itself decided to resume testing.

Fallback safeguards: This has been a contentious issue between the two parties. The US Congress which is asked to cough up funds for various world bodies is worried that if the IAEA goes broke, it may suspend inspections on Indian facilities. So there were calls for “fallback” safeguards, possibly by the US itself. This is anathema to India which has since accepted the possibility that it may, in such a circumstance, provide the funds to the IAEA to carry out it’s Indian inspections !

Some larger issues:

In the July 18, 2005 agreement “ President Bush conveyed his appreciation to the Prime Minister over India's strong commitment to preventing WMD proliferation and stated that as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology, India should acquire the same benefits and advantages as other such states.”

By and large the US has kept this promise. India is now getting the treatment that EURATOM, Japan or Switzerland get. One important aspect of the negotiations is that this has not come to India as a right. As a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), India could not demand that it be treated as a signatory. The Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel has effectively embargoed India and squeezed our programme enormously—we have more installed wind energy than nuclear energy despite huge expenditures in the nuclear front.

It is our fortune that the geopolitical trends impelled the US to lead the effort to lift the embargo. But to extrapolate that this means that we were always “right” and they were “wrong” is to miss the point. International politics is rarely about rights and wrongs. They need us geopolitically, and we need them, if we are to have a viable nuclear power programme, to provide us nuclear materials and technology. This is a fair exchange.

But many, especially the old scientists who had borne the brunt of the US embargo, allowed the bitterness to overcome rational thinking. They began to place demands that would be tantamount to the US and the NSG community eating humble pie and admitting that they had been “wrong” and India “right.”

Fortunately, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his officials realized that a “need- based” approach works better than a “rights- based” one, especially since the rest of the world doesn’t feel we have the right to anything as non-signatories to the NPT. It is this need-based approach that finally persuaded the US to give us prior-consent for reprocessing and saving the agreement. India explained that we need reprocessing rights, not only because we need plutonium to use in our fast-breeder programme, but also to take care of accumulations of spent fuel that will result from the burgeoning of large-size reactors that could come in the wake of the agreement.

Indo-US Nuclear Deal: The last lap

(This has been revised in the past 12 hours)

As readers of this blog know, I have been, and remain, a strong supporter of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Many of my articles of the past two years can be found in this blog archive. I was 100 per cent sure that the US will concede all the major issues—right to reprocess nuclear fuel, accepting the concept of perpetual supply of fuel for reactors in exchange for our placing our civilian reactors under perpetual safeguards, linked to this ensuring that the deal is not automatically held hostage to the consequences of another Indian nuclear test, and the issue of fallback safeguards that would be needed if the IAEA failed to carry out it's duties.

My reasoning is that the US is not motivated by a desire to get a slice of the Indian nuclear power industry pie, or on capping India’s nuclear weapons programme. It based on a strategic calculation that requires a friendly India. This is not because we are ‘good’ and ‘deserving’ or even a democracy, but because our size, economic potential and location makes us just about the only large country that can offset the powerful gravitational pull being exerted by China. Our political ethos, not dissimilar to that of the US and the western world is a bonus. The problem for the US was that not only was India was subject to a host of US technology restrictions, but that most of the history of Indo-US relations was one of the Americans seeking to contain India, in alliance with Pakistan and even China. (see the previous post) You cannot befriend a country you also embargo and contain.

An awareness of the need to change this made the many US concessions possible. As for India, it sees the deal as a huge “confidence building measure” on the part of the Americans, or a token of atonement of the many wrongs they have inflicted on us in the past. India's new breed of realpolitik leaders don't want ritual apologies, they prefer to follow the Chinese style of extracting what you can when the situation is in your favour.

Now India has nothing to complain about the nuclear deal, and everything to celebrate. It's not surprising that on Wednesday, the Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs and the Cabinet Committee on Security met jointly and quickly approved of the draft agreement. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherji declared that all of India's concerns had been met in the recent round of talks in Washington DC.

Now, the world's sole super-power, one is willing to loosen the tight nuclear embargo it had placed on the civil part of our nuclear programme. The effect of the Indo-US nuclear agreement will be that while India remains a non-signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty the US has agreed to resume nuclear cooperation in trade in the civil nuclear side, even while giving a specific commitment that it will not hamper India's weapons' programme. It has agreed to actively work to persuade the rest of it's cartel, the Nuclear Suppliers Group to do the same.

"It's too good to be true," said a senior official involved in the negotiations who spoke on background to this blogger earlier this week. The US decision has rescued the Indian civil nuclear programme as well, because India lacks natural uranium and its three-stage programme aiming at self-sufficiency through using the Thorium-Uranium cycle was in serious jeopardy. As it is, the American-led embargo had seriously crippled the programme both in terms of size and technology.

Because, say officials who went for the talks, the deal was wide open on all the three counts listed above when the team led by Indian National Security Adviser Narayanan and Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon went to Washington on July 17. There, in addition to the official-level talks, the Indian team leaders held parallel discussions with top US officials, Cheney, Hadley and Rice. By all accounts the talks were extended for a fourth and fifth day because of these discussions and in the end we have a “frozen text”—a draft agreement which, though already approved formally by India, must now be approved by the the US system.

The political push so vital for the agreement came from the very top-- President George W. Bush in the US and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in India. Note the key role played by US Vice-President Dick Cheney and US National Security Adviser Steve Hadley and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in breaking the log-jam in Washington.

The latest report by one of the agreement’s more knowledgeable and balanced critics Siddharth Varadarajan of The Hindu indicates that the ‘frozen text’ now with the Indian and US governments has met all the many requirements that were set for it and more.
Already two nuclear scientists, Placid Rodrigues and M.R. Srinivasan who attacked the July 18 Agreement have come out to declare it a success. See this report.

A senior official involved in the negotiations says that the deal meets India's goals because:

1. It places no hindrance on our strategic or military programme. 2. It does not hinder our cherished indigenous three-stage nuclear power programme and finally 3. It is in consonance with all the assurances given by Prime Minister Singh in Parliament.

The senior official says that the agreement now contains “specific language” declaring that the aim of the agreement is not to hinder any “unsafeguarded nuclear activity” on the part of India-- in other words the military part of our programme. In fact he says the deal has ‘no language on nuclear tests’ . While the US is required by it’s law to halt all cooperation with countries that conduct nuclear tests, the Hyde Act has given an exemption that covers the May 1998 tests. While India is aware that another test will have consequences, the Indo-US 123 agreement remains silent on the issue, a fact that tells it's own story.

The ghost of Tarapur

In the frozen agreement according to the senior official, the US has agreed to give India “prior consent” to reprocess US-origin nuclear fuel. This is an issue that had bedeviled the past couple of rounds of talks because, first, the US did not understand India’s need for reprocessing (this is linked to making plutonium to fuel fast-breeder reactors for stage II of India’s power programme). The US prior consent is conditional on India creating a dedicated national facility for reprocessing fuel which will be safeguarded by the IAEA to it’s declared standards on reprocessing, storage, safety and security.

Such a consent was available for the US-supplied Tarapur reactors as well. But when India called for consultations on the issue of reprocessing in the 1970s, the US simply refused to sit down and talk and the result was that India has had to bear the cost of storing the US-origin spent fuel.
To ensure this does not happen the current agreement has a provision which requires consultations to begin within 6 months of the Indian request, and within a year an agreement will be reached.

Cessation of cooperation

Any agreement worth it’s salt must have some way of coping with a breakdown. In this case, the guiding star is again the Tarapur agreement. The US Atomic Energy Act insists that should this happen, it should get back all the equipment and materials supplied. This seems logical, but is impractical. Uprooting a nuclear power plant is simply not possible. The only option is to entomb it. As for materials, especially spent fuel, most suppliers would rather not have it back because of problems of storage.

The current agreement contains an elaborate schema for any “cessation of cooperation” situation. According to the senior official, it will have a “many-layered” process of consultation after the cessation. This will focus on safety and compensation, with US commitment to the “continuous operation of the reactor” of US origin. In other words, the US government will not seek to uproot or halt its’ operation. It could demand the return of US-origin fuel, but only after India was satisfied that it had made up the deficit from alternate sources. Here again the process would not be interminable. The US would be committed to stating what it wants back within a year and compensating India for the return.

What the draft agreement has not given us

The “frozen agreement” does not as yet enable trade in enrichment and reprocessing(ENR) technologies. The US prohibits their export to all countries, but says the senior official, India already has these technologies. What India wants, however, are components but this can only happen through an amendment to the current agreement. Parliament is also bound to question the “prior consent” framework for reprocessing saying that there is always a chance that the US may renege at the last moment. Officials say that the issue will really come up after a decade and more because this presumed that India will, first, have to buy a US reactor, then use it for several years and accumulate sufficient spent fuel for reprocessing. At the same time it would have to build the dedicated facility for reprocessing it. So why hold the agreement hostage to speculative possibility, namely that India will indeed buy a US reactor ?

The Real Prize

India now needs to work out an agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency and get the approval of the 43-member Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel. This should happen by October or November. Then the draft agreement, the IAEA India-specific Additional Protocol and the NSG's new rules on nuclear trade with India would be together sent to the US Congress and the 123 Agreement would be subjected to an "up or down" vote. This means that there will be no discussion or amendment, simply a vote on whether the Congress approves or disapproves of the agreement.

The NSG is the real prize. The Indo-US Agreement is merely the key that will unlock the global embargo on our programme. When the embargo is lifted, India will have the option of nuclear trade with several countries who are not as finicky as the US on nuclear issues. It is not that they are less committed to non-proliferation and will not insist on stringent safeguards on us, only that they will not have onerous rules of the type listed in the US Atomic Energy Act. Further, and perhaps more important, they have more advanced nuclear power technology-- Russian reactors are cheaper and the French more sophisticated.

Could the US use the NSG to pin India down on issues it has conceded in the ‘123 Agreement’?
Unlikely, say Indian officials, they have tried in the past but failed. Indeed, they are actually obligated by the July 18, 2005 agreement to push India’s case in the NSG. The US will give it in writing to India that it will not press the NSG to cut off cooperation with India, should the Indo-US agreement be terminated in some future date for some unspecified reason.

Domestic fallout

“Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan”. You will soon be reading about those who played a sterling role in working out the Indo-US nuclear deal. The actual fact is that barring Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself, no senior political figure backed the deal openly, though External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherji played a key behind-the-scenes role in promoting it. One reason was that many in the ruling coalition did not understand the deal and its implications and some didn’t bother to think about it. Among political parties only Left understood what it meant—the route to closer Indo-US ties—and so opposed it vehemently.

The BJP’s hostile stance is part of its addled post-2004 politics. The opposition of the “retired nuclear scientist” lobby ranged from senility to xenophobia. Many of those involved forgot their own record of incompetence and disservice to the Indian nuclear programme whose true history remains to be written. The mendacity of some of them has been truly astonishing.

And as for our bomb programme....

Those who claim that the deal will undermine our minimum credible deterrent should read the article here written by K. Santhanam, the DRDO scientist who steered the Indian nuclear weapons programme through the 1990s. He says "The accumulated weapons-grade plutonium in about 40 years of operating the CIRUS reactor (40MWt) and the relatively new Dhruv reactor (100MWt) has been estimated to be sufficient for the MCD (Minimum Credible Deterrent)."