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“FOR 34 years, India has suffered from a nuclear apartheid. We have not been able to trade in nuclear material, nuclear reactors, and nuclear raw materials. And when this restrictive regime ends, I think a great deal of credit will go to President Bush. And, for this I am very grateful to you, Mr. President,” exclaimed the Prime Minister of India in Washington, September 25 2008. “People of India deeply love you” – he added, his voice choking with emotion. And this just after the US kicked his country in the belly once again by adding further punitive conditions in the shape of bills passed in the Senate and House of Representatives.
Simply put, these bills establish the explicit supremacy of the Hyde Act and other US laws over the 123 Agreement, directly contradicting the Prime Minister’s assertion that it was bound only by the 123 Agreement. Particularly irritating is the tougher language used in subsection (b) of Section 102 of the Senate bill:
" Pursuant to section 103(a)(6) of the Henry J Hyde United States-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act of 2006, in the event that nuclear transfers to India are suspended or terminated pursuant to title I of such Act, [if for example India conducts another atomic test] the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, or any other United States law, it is the policy of the United States to seek to prevent [this word replaces an earlier “discourage”; emphasis added] the transfer to India of nuclear equipment, materials, or technology from other participating governments in the Nuclear Suppliers Group or from any other source."
It is further abundantly clear that, contrary to Manmohan Singh’s explicit assurances on the floor of Parliament, the Deal does not deliver assured fuel supply for India; neither any assurance regarding building a strategic fuel reserve for the life time of the reactor; nor any ‘corrective measures’ or right to remove reactors from safeguards in case of fuel supply failure.
Even without such strings attached, however, the US-India nuclear deal would have been a bad, very bad deal. And even if the waiver our country got at the recent Nuclear Suppliers Group meeting were really "clean and unconditional" and not saddled with restrictions, that would have been no boon to our country. It is now common knowledge that the fundamental condition on which the whole thing is based is that Indian foreign policy must be "congruent with" -- read subservient to -- that of the US, a savage imperialist power and the world people’s enemy number one. And as we have explained in the pages that follow, nuclear power involves enormous environmental hazards, prohibitive costs, long gestation periods and, in our case, crippling technological, economic and strategic dependence on foreign powers. Moreover, the Indian ruling elite has always used nuclear power programmes for surreptitious weaponisation schemes that militate against the causes of peace and progress and this trend will get a big boost from recent developments on the nuclear front. It is therefore absolutely necessary to rely not on nuclear power but on safe, clean, inexhaustible sources like solar and wind energy. Contrary to official propaganda, this is perfectly feasible, as noted Marxist historian DD Kosambi showed years ago in a lecture reproduced here.
Most of the articles in this collection appeared in Liberation or ML Update in the course of the intensified campaign against the Nuke Deal. These articles comment on the changing political equations and challenges for the Left following the trust vote in Indian Parliament; discuss the inherent hazards of nuclear power generation and the feasibility of cleaner alternatives; expose inflated claims regarding energy generation by the Nuke Deal and throw light on the sordid sell-out of our national sovereignty that the Deal implies.
Once the Deal comes into effect, its deadly implications (already in evidence) will unfold even more rapidly. The need of the hour is an intensified mass movement against the deadly nuclear knot and the pamphlet in your hand seeks to serve that cause.
5 November 2008
- Central Publicity Department
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
New Delhi
WHY did the Congress-UPA leaders put their own government in peril for the sake of just one deal? Was it really a noble aim of securing energy security for India, that motivated the no-holds-barred bullying, barter and buying of support during the trust vote in Parliament? Every Indian needs to know: what are the real implications of the Deal?
According to the agreement with the IAEA, the Deal was necessary to meet “the twin challenges of energy security and protection of the environment”. If we are to believe the advertisements taken out by the government of India in the national press, nuclear power is absolutely necessary basically for three reasons: it produces more energy than any other source; it is the most efficient, safe and environmentally cleanest source of energy; it becomes more important in light of rising oil prices. The substance of these claims we will examine in the pages that follow, but at least a simple fact must be noted here. The Central Electricity Authority (CEA) tells us that the installed nuclear power capacity in the country as of May 31, 2008 is only 4120 MW, as compared to a total power generation capacity 144,565 MW, that is, about 2.85 percent. And according to figures provided by Anil Kakodkar, chairperson of the Department of Atomic Energy, the deal will increase India's installed energy capacity only by 2.5% by 2020. The bulk of electricity in the country, and indeed in the whole world, comes from coal.
Clearly the urgent desperation for the Deal did not lie in our growing energy needs; that counts only as the most plausible pretext.
We should remember the Trojan Horse and ask ourselves: why does the US want this Deal? What are the strings attached to this ‘gift’?
The Bush Administration’s immediate stake was to try and add an item to the republican government’s empty success card. Another is to pump up U.S. reactor sales -- the industry has been running without any new orders for more than 30 years. But the most important reason lies in US geopolitical strategy. The basic motive in this case is to make India into Washington’s most trusted regional pawn in South Asia. As Barack Obama's declared support to the deal indicates, the US establishment is broadly behind Bush on the last two questions.
It must also be said that the ‘gift’ itself is hardly as generous as it seems. The Indian Government makes much of the claim that India, as a privileged exception to NSG norms, is to receive nuclear fuel supply although it has not signed the NPT. However, this claim is belied by the fact that India, with its voluntary moratorium, has already conceded as much.
The meeting point between New Delhi and Washington came out in bold relief in a joint press conference at Hokkaido, Japan, held just after the Indian Prime Minister informed the US president about his decision to go ahead and operationalise the deal.
“I thank the President for his personal magnificent contribution to the evolution of our relationship”, said an ebullient Manmohan Singh.
“… it is the intention of my government” , he added, " [and]… the will of the Indian people, particularly the thinking segments of our population, that … whether it is a question of climate change, whether it is a question of managing the global economy, India and United States must stand tall, stand shoulder to shoulder, and that's what is going to happen." Those who are opposing the nuclear deal in India are thoughtless, brainless creatures, he implied. The full spectrum support or rather submission was duly reciprocated by George W. Bush. Expressing great respect for the Indian Prime Minister, he said: "... I think it's very important that the United States continues to work with our friend to develop not only a new strategic relationship, but a relationship that addresses some of the world’s problems.”
More recently, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, making a case for the Deal before the US Congress, put it candidly, “the nuclear balance in the region is a function of the political and military situation in the region. We are far more likely to be able to influence these regional dynamics” with the Indo-US Nuke Deal in place. In other words, the Nuke Deal will bind India to enabling the US to ‘influence’ the ‘political and military situation in the region.’
The single message emanating from both sides was clear enough. America wants India, and India is ready, to play second fiddle in the international campaigns of the latter, and coming on top of a long list of recent pacts, the nuclear deal was to be viewed as the gateway to this new, higher level of strategic partnership. The Manmohan government seeks to justify this on the thoroughly comprador logic that India can grow taller and stronger only by going deeper and deeper into American embrace in economic (including energy), diplomatic and military domains.
And this is where the people of India are dead against the deal. History knows of countless instances -- the latest one being the recent air-raid on Pakistan -- to show that the United States is a country that looks after its own interests alone in both friendship and enmity. Anchored in the US Hyde Act, the deal will push India's energy economy into alarming depths of dependency on the US. Informed scientific and patriotic-democratic opinion in the country has already rejected it as a charter of modern-day slavery. Some pseudo-nationalists would have us believe that our country is too big to be dominated by any other; but history tells us that size is no bar here: undivided India was even bigger when tiny England kept it in subjugation for nearly 200 years.
The other most vital plank on which the deal must be opposed concerns the utter contempt for national opinion that has characterised the government's conduct all through. Ronen Sen’s "headless chickens" comment against MPs was condoned; P Chidambaram in his convocation address at IIM Ahmedabad in March last year went on record saying, "Indian ... democracy has often paralyzed decision making ... this approach must change"; after the deal was halted in November Manmohan Singh wondered, in front of an international audience at the Fourth International Conference on Federalism, whether a "single party state" would be preferable. Add to this the paranoiac non-transparency with which the whole thing has been rushed through. The text of the draft safeguards agreement negotiated with the IAEA secretariat was kept a secret from the nation, even the parliament, even the MPs who for all practical purposes formed the second tier of government, on the false ground that IAEA rules required the Indian government to treat it as a “privileged” and confidential document. All this constituted a serious affront to democracy and we must punish the UPA Government for it. Thirdly, we must resist the deal because nuclear energy is by no means a safe, viable and desirable option for meeting India's energy needs either at this juncture or in the foreseeable future.
POWER shortage and rising prices of oil are something our people experience in their daily lives. In fact the Government is facing tremendous popular anger against privatisation of power and price rise of essential commodities spinning off from oil price hike. The UPA Govt is claiming the Nuke Deal will solve that shortage. Newspaper ads, put out by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas have claimed that nuclear power becomes more important as an alternative to traditional power sources like diesel in the light of rising oil prices. And Congress is propagating that the Nuke Deal will provide “Ghar Ghar mein bijli” (electricity in every home).
Today, nuclear energy generated by India’s 17 reactors accounts for less than 3% of India’s total electricity-generating capacity. Even according to the optimistic (and possibly inflated) estimates of the Government, assuming the best post-Deal scenario nuclear energy will only account for 7-9% of India’s total installed capacity by 2020. Electricity in India (and much of the world) comes from coal, not nuclear energy.
Secondly, nuclear plants take far longer to build than thermal power plants and gas-fired plants.
Thirdly, nuclear power has very high capital costs, and is necessarily centralised: i.e you cannot have a nuclear plant in each region or even state. Therefore, there is no way in which electricity generated in a nuclear plant can be used to supply electricity to homes all over the country! Logically, a few such plants can augment total electricity generation and thus help supply electricity to only some additional homes.
In India, the main shortage is for power that can be generated during times of ‘peak demand’ – say in the evenings in homes. The cost of electricity is usually determined more by the capital cost of power plants (i.e the amount it takes to build them) than the operating costs. The capital cost of nuclear reactors is very high and these reactors, for technical reasons, cannot be shut on and off at will – therefore they are unsuitable for supplying short bursts of peak demand power.
We all know that a major factor in hikes in prices of essential commodities is the rise in the price of diesel, which is used in trucks which transport essential commodities. Trucks cannot run on electricity, can they? Therefore the Government’s claim that nuclear power can replace diesel and reduce our dependence on steeply priced oil is bogus.
Finally, nuclear energy can generate only electricity – obviously we will still need other kinds of fuel for transport, fertilizers, petrochemicals etc... Enhancing our own indigenous coal production and oil exploration; and the Iran-Pakistan-India Gas Pipeline are therefore far more trustworthy and real sources of India’s energy security than any Nuke Deal.
Another important source of power is water and a comprehensive water-sharing and management treaty with Nepal could bring immense benefit to both Nepal and India in terms of generation of hydro-electricity. But for reasons best known to it, the Government of India is also reluctant to seize the new opportunity to forge close bilateral and mutually beneficial ties with republican Nepal.
As we have seen above, nuclear energy cannot substantially reduce our dependence on oil, gas or coal. If so, does it make any sense for the UPA Government to drag its feet on negotiations with Teheran and Islamabad on the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, for the sake of the Nuke Deal with USA?
Can it benefit our nation to damage or endanger our good relations with oil-producing countries of West Asia (from whom we’ll have to keep buying oil) in the name of ‘strategic partnership’ with the USA?
50% more expensive: M V Ramana of the Centre of Interdisciplinary Studies in Environment and Development, along with two researchers from the International Energy Initiative compared the costs of a nuclear plant (the Kaiga atomic power station) and a nearby coal plant. They found that the nuclear plant “was about 8 percent more expensive at the government-determined rate of return on investment (ROI), which reflects the present value of future benefits and costs. At market rates of ROI, however, it could be 50 percent more expensive.” Further, the researchers point out that this comparison does not account for the costs of cleaning up radioactive waste, though the cost of disposing fly ash is internalized in the costs of coal-generated electricity. Reprocessing is extremely expensive – the cost of reprocessing each kilogram of spent fuel from the Department of Atomic Energy’s heavy-water reactors is in the range of Rs. 20,000-30,000.
If the above is the case with the reactors we already have, the costs of imported reactors will further push up the costs. Nuclear power plants built with imported nuclear reactors will be three times as costly as coal-fired plants. The cost of electricity from imported nuclear plants will be more than Rs. 5.00 per unit as against about Rs. 2.00 to Rs. 2.50 per unit from coal-fired plants.
Further, the Government will have to provide insurance cover against nuclear accidents, and create funds to pay for clean-ups and compensation in case of accidents. This too is a huge subsidy about which the Government is silent.
With climate change and global warming as a result of burning of fossil fuels emerging as a major environmental threat, our Government is claiming that nuclear energy is a cleaner source of energy.
But as we have seen, nuclear energy is nowhere close to replacing other fuels: at best it can produce electricity; while other sectors of the economy that are responsible for the bulk of carbon emissions will continue to do so.
Even where electricity is concerned, nuclear power cannot be the solution for climate change because according to the IPCC Working Committee Report on Climate Change, it accounts for a very small part of the world’s supply: just 16% of the world’s electricity supply in 2005, and an estimated 18% share of the total electricity supply in 2030. For reducing greenhouse gases to address climate change, there is no other viable way except to change our way of life, promote public transport, and explore renewable energy sources like hydro, solar and wind power and clean coal technologies. The US, one of the worst offenders against the environment, has arrogantly refused to consider such solutions, declaring that the “American way of life is non-negotiable” and arguing absurdly that cows in India produce more greenhouse gases than cars in the US! The same irresponsible US is preaching that India should sign the Nuke Deal to combat global warming!
It is true that nuclear reactors themselves do not directly emit greenhouse gases that contribute to global climate change. But the “emissions” from those reactors take the form of extremely radioactive waste that is dangerous for tens of thousands of years, is also dangerous to transport, is an obvious target for terrorists, can be used to make “dirty bombs,” and is endlessly expensive to endlessly manage.
Recent research highlighted in the prestigious British journal, The Ecologist, estimates that when the entire production cycle is accounted for, nuclear power emits less greenhouse gas than burning coal but far more than alternatives such as wind or solar energy. Energy conservation strategies, according to the same study, are far more effective in reducing carbon dioxide emissions than resorting to nuclear power stations.
There is no safe long-term solution to the problem of radioactive waste from nuclear plants; this waste stays radioactive and poisons the lives of future generations for thousands of years.
In the Chernobyl disaster, thousands were killed; huge tracts of land were contaminated; agriculture had to be suspended and over a lakh people had to relocated. The devastating impact of a similar disaster in India’s countryside is terrible to imagine. Nuclear technology is too complex for it to be possible to anticipate and prevent accidents.
In India, most existing reactors have experienced accidents – for example the unexplained power surge at the Kakrapar reactor in 2004; the 1993 fire at Narora; the collapse of containment at Kaiga in 1994 – and any such accident could well cause a major disaster.
Further, there is ample evidence of congenital deformities, spontaneous abortions, stillbirths, and tumours caused by radioactive pollution in the area surrounding the atomic power station at Kota and the uranium mining area at Jadugoda.
In the month of July 2008 itself, two leaks have been discovered at nuclear plants in France, one of the few countries of the world which does actually use nuclear power for a substantial part of its energy needs. The French Government is trying to downplay the danger that the leaks might have been poisoning the water supply.
There are three stages of plant lifetime: the break-in phase, middle life phase, and wear-out phase. Any new reactors that are built will start out on the high-risk break-in segment. Several nuclear plant disasters—Fermi (USA 1966), Three Mile Island (USA 1979), and Chernobyl (erstwhile USSR 1986) to name just a few—demonstrated the perils of navigating this part of the lifetime curve.
The pro-Nuke lobby is accusing the opponents of the Deal of ‘holding back progress,’ claiming that Nuke energy is the ‘technology’ of the future – and the Deal gives India a once in a lifetime opportunity to have access to the most advanced technology. This is an outright lie.
In the US, Western Europe and Japan, taken together, the total number of nuclear plants being built currently is only 3. In many of these countries (such as Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland), construction of nuclear plants has ceased and is being phased out. The US commissioned its last nuclear power reactor in 1996 and has not licensed a new reactor now for more than 27 years! The US nuclear industry is in a decline – and they hope that the Deal with India will give it a boost. India will be buying reactors from the US – reactors that the US itself has been forced to discard thanks, in large part, to the prohibitively high costs. A 2003 study by researchers at MIT found that the cost of U.S. nuclear-generated electricity is about 60 percent higher than electricity generated from coal.
It is well-known that India has vast thorium reserves and poor uranium reserves. India’s three-stage atomic programme was supposed to eventually develop fast breeder reactors (FBRs) that could use thorium. In 2005, the DAE commissioned and commercialised India’s first two 540 MW Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR) plants at Tarapur. India’s only test-scale FBR was set up in 1985; had to be shut down between 1987-89 due to technical problems; and has functioned continuously at best for 55 days at a time in 2000.
Despite the fact that the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has cornered the lion’s share of India’s science and technology allocation, India’s atomic programme has not lived up to the claims made for it at its inception. In the 1960s, the nuclear establishment had projected that nuclear energy would generate 43.5 GW by 2000 – and yet it has managed to generate only a small fraction (2.7 GW) of that estimated capacity.
The problem is that in India, as in most countries, ‘civilian’ nuclear programmes have actually been a cover for developing bombs. India’s nuclear energy programme was derailed by the surreptitious use of plutonium from reprocessed spent fuel of the Canada-supplied CIRUS reactor for developing a bomb. The detonation of the bomb in 1974 was followed by sanctions and setbacks in terms of the international reluctance to share technology and render other cooperation to India’s nuclear programme. Today, the UPA Government says that those sanctions and setbacks can be corrected with the Indo-US Nuke Deal, which allows us to import uranium and Light Water Reactors (LWRs). But if the basic surreptitious thrust continues to remain on bombs, we can be sure that whatever potential India’s nuclear programme has for generating civilian energy will not be realised.
In any case, even top atomic scientists - P K Iyengar, ex-Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) head, A Gopalakrishnan, former head of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and A N Prasad, former director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) – have expressed serious reservations about the Nuke Deal. At stake, they feel, is the indigenous technology of PHWRs, and thorium-based FBRs which Indian scientists have been developing. Serious reservations are also there among scientists about the wisdom of making India’s nuclear programme dependent on imported supplies of uranium, thus putting it at the mercy of the US-led international cartel that controls uranium supply and prices.
The jury is still out on nuclear technology. Before investing in imported nuclear reactors in such a major way, before tying ourselves down to a dependency on imported fuel that even in the best-case projections does not promise us any substantial energy gains, India certainly ought to consider other options more seriously.
IN August 2007, India and the United States reached a bilateral agreement on civilian nuclear cooperation as envisioned in the joint statement released by President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on July 18, 2005. The deal would lift the U.S. moratorium on nuclear trade with India (which came into effect after India's first nuclear test in 1974), provide U.S. assistance to India's civilian nuclear energy program, and expand U.S.-Indian cooperation in energy and satellite technology.
India agrees to
According to the official Indian story, the country would be eligible to buy U.S. Light Water Reactors (LWRs) and dual-use nuclear technology, including materials and equipment that could be used to enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium (potentially creating the material for nuclear bombs). It would also receive imported fuel for its nuclear reactors and develop a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any disruption of supply. However, the US-NSG versions or interpretations are quite different (as explained elsewhere) and they caste a lot of doubt on the Indian claim.
To quote form article 2 of the 123 agreement which constitutes the core of this deal: "… each party shall implement this agreement in accordance with its respective applicable treaties, national law regulations, and license requirements... ". Now to quote from the Hyde Act, Section 102 part 6 (a): "The country[ India]... has a foreign policy that is congruent to that of America." Thus US will act according to the Hyde Act – in this way it becomes binding on India.
Clause ‘g’ of Section 104 of the same act binds the American president to report to American Congress about the activities of Indian government. The deal is thus based on the premise that our foreign policy is congruent with that of Washington and the supply of nuclear energy will depend on the certificate, which our government will have to obtain from the US Congress every year.
WE are being told that with the new 123 Agreement in place, the US will be committed to boosting India’s nuclear energy programme. But is this claim borne out by our own bitter experience of a previous 123 Agreement on nuclear cooperation with the US?
Yes, in 1963 in the wake of the border war with China, ‘non-aligned’ India was seduced and arm-twisted by the US to sign a nuclear cooperation agreement. The terms of the 1963 ‘123’ treaty look far more benign today compared to the stringent conditions that are written into the present agreement. There was no question of India granting eternal supervision rights on all her civilian nuclear facilities. Nor was there any India-specific law like the Hyde Act to govern the operation of that agreement. Yet following India’s 1971 friendship pact with the Soviet Union and the 1974 nuclear test, the US terminated fuel supplies for the Tarapur plant and unilaterally suspended the operation of the treaty which eventually lapsed in 1993.
We can forget and ignore this experience only at our own peril.
Excerpts from a talk by Professor D.D. Kosambi to the Rotary Club of Poona, on July 25, 1960
“THE sun gets most of its energy from fusion. Four nuclei of hydrogen are squeezed together under immense heat and pressure to form one of Helium. A certain amount of mass left over in the process is converted directly into energy, by Einstein's Law. This has been done on earth in the hydrogen bomb.
“… Those who say that atomic energy can compete with thermal or hydro-power, carefully omit to mention the fact that the preliminary costs have always been written off to someone else's account usually that of some government. The advanced countries have quietly reduced their atomic power programs. The prestige of having atomic power stations does not compensate the extra expenditure or the extra danger involved, Where does that leave us in India? We do need every available source of power quickly. Can we utilise atomic power for national progress? This question has already been answered in the affirmative by the high command. The papers inform us that another hundred crores or more are to be devoted to this purpose beyond undisclosed millions already spent. It was announced in August 1956 that India had joined the ranks of the atomic-energy producing countries. Actually, we were not then producing any atomic power. Though a second reactor costing another ten crores of rupees has gone into operation, and the staff has reached over two thousand highly trained graduates, we still, produce no utilisable atomic power….
“I do wish to point out that the main work in producing atomic energy has already been done without cost to India by a permanent source, which has only to be utilised properly. This generous source is the sun, which goes on pouring its blasting rays into every tropical country, at an uncomfortable rate.
“Can solar energy be used directly? The answer is yes. The USA, Russia or England, for example do not receive so much direct solar radiation as India. There is no reason why we should ape them in all things, including the development of atomic energy at a fantastic cost with low-grade Indian uranium. The catch in solar energy is its storage. The current you may want at night can be produced irregularly in the daytime.
“This is not an insoluble difficulty. Quite efficient forms of storage batteries are known. It is possible to combine several uses with mechanical storage. For example, water could be pumped up into 50-foot village towers during sunlight hours, and then allowed to run out for irrigation, or home use, through low-pressure turbines that generate electricity whenever wanted. This is not very efficient at the second stage, but the main purpose of augmenting our poor water supply will have been efficiently served, village-by-village. The most important advantage of solar energy would be decentralisation. Solar power would be the best available source of energy for dispersed small industry and local use in India. If you really mean to have socialism in any form, without the stifling effects of bureaucracy and heavy initial investment, there is no other source so efficient. Take the simple problem of afforestation, which alone can change India's agriculture, preserve her rapidly eroding soil, and increase production. This problem is insoluble unless people have cheap fuel for cooking, so that they need not cut down trees.
“We have the real cost-free source of atomic power, the sun, at our disposal, for more than eight months of the year.
The Chinese use semi-conductors directly to produce enough electricity even from the waste heat of an ordinary kerosene lamp to run a radio set; their appliances are on the international market now. What India could use best in this way still remains to be determined.
“The principle involved in the use of atomic energy produced by the sun as against that from atomic piles is parallel to that between small and large dams for irrigation. The large dam is very impressive to look at, but its construction and use mean heavy expenditure in one locality, and bureaucratic administration. The small bunding operation can be done with local labour, stops erosion of the soil, and can be fitted into any corner of the country where there is some rainfall. It solves two fundamental problems: how to keep the rain-water from flowing off rapidly into the sea, unused; and how to encourage local initiative while giving direct economic gain to the small producer.
“Every notable advance in man's control over new sources of energy has been hampered by outworn superstition or obsolete social forms. Fire is regarded today as a convenient tool it the service of humanity. Primitive man thought it necessary to worship fire as a god. Agni received human and animal sacrifice; vestal virgins might be dedicated to his service. Is it less miserable a superstition that calls for the sacrifice of millions of men and animals, living or as yet unborn, to atomic tests and radio-active fallout?...”
STRANGE are the ways of global politics. In 1974 the US, along with Canada, imposed nuclear embargoes on India, which had just conducted its first nuclear explosion, and took the lead in founding the London club -- later to become the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) -- to quarantine India. In 1992 it pressured the NSG to adopt a set of “Export Guidelines” that made those embargoes universal, thereby blocking fresh contracts even with countries such as Russia and France. In 1998 it imposed fresh sanctions on New Delhi after the second Pokhran blasts. Come July 2005 and the same US, in a dramatic reversal of the policy pursued for over 30 years, starts nuclear handshake with the same India and in three years it brings the latter back into the global nuclear mainstream by pressuring the NSG to bend its rules and lift sanctions on India, a denounced NPT holdout!
What did the trick? A couple of closely connected developments: India’s emergence as a very lucrative market for nuclear trade (thanks to her transition to a higher growth trajectory with growing energy appetite and -- this is seldom mentioned in the official and unofficial press -- her ambitious nuclear weaponisation programme) and the altered, post-9/11 US perception of India as a junior partner in the strategy of world domination nicknamed “war against terror.”
The economic motive was manifested, inter alia, in U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s request in the immediate aftermath of the “Vienna victory” that India should not go to the world nuclear market till the 123 agreement was finally passed, so that American companies were not disadvantaged. Within days, it became clear that a grateful New Delhi was overly eager to serve the Americans. William Burns, U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington on September 18:
“The Indian government has provided the United States with a strong Letter of Intent, stating its intention to purchase reactors with at least 10,000 Mega Watts worth of new power generation capacity from U.S. firms (this implies India expending about Rs. 280,000 crore -- @ 28 crore per MW -- of Indian money to bail out the US nuclear industry – A Sen). India has committed to devote at least two sites to U.S. firms. India also has committed to adhere to the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (this means that in the case of any disaster, the Indian Government will take over all liabilities from the suppliers and the operators -- A Sen).”
As for India’s strategic entanglement, that has already been proved in ample measure by the frequent joint military manoeuvres with the US on an expanding scale, the foot-dragging on the Iran gas pipeline project, and similar other developments. We will return to this point later in this note, but let us first concern ourselves with a more urgent question: what do we as Indians get -- and give -- through the Indo-US nuclear deal (assuming that US congressional ratification will be obtained probably this month or sometime later) and the IAEA-NSG approvals?
Yes, we will accept nothing short of that -- roared Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Anil Kakodkar and other high officials during the run-up to the NSG meeting, duly echoed by the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. But a series of shocking revelations in the first ten days of September, followed by a number of aftershocks, brought out the wisdom of the old saying: empty vessels sound much.
“I confirm that there is nothing in these agreements which prevents us from further nuclear tests if warranted by our national security concerns”, the PM declared during the debate preceding the July trust vote. The January 2008 State Department letter to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, on the other hand, states that India has been left in no doubt that if it conducted a test, the US could at its discretion suspend or terminate all supplies. It is also important to remember that Pranab Mukherjee’s commitment of “voluntary, unilateral moratorium on nuclear testing and non-proliferation” was made following a specific “suggestion” from the US negotiators in Vienna. Though nothing new, it was officially taken as a “basis” for the waiver. Finally, the reworded text on which the NSG put its seal of approval -- reluctantly and under the heaviest possible US pressure -- reconfirms the real nature of the agreement. When read with the national statements issued by Austria, China, Germany, Ireland, Japan and others, the text indicates that member countries are expected to consult among themselves and terminate nuclear trade with India if it resumes testing. Technically this is not automatic - every country is free to decide on its own - but records of recent past strongly indicate that the NSG as a cartel would act in unison in such an eventuality, especially if the US takes the lead.
The protagonists of nuclear deal have stated that in case the US terminates the supply of fuel, it would be magnanimous enough to find India alternative sources. The State Department letter clarifies that the US gave fuel supply assurances only “to guard against disruption of fuel supply to India that might occur through no fault of India’s own,” e.g., trade war, market disruptions, etc. -- and that such assurances are “not ... meant to insulate India against the consequences of a nuclear explosive test or a violation of non-proliferation commitments”. It also states that in the latter cases (involving a nuclear test or other violation) India would have no right to take “corrective measures” against fuel-supply disruptions.
What type of equipments and technologies are we going to get, and under what conditions? Analyst R Ramachandran writes in Frontline, Sept 13-26, 2008:
“Full Civil Nuclear Cooperation: This is a key part of the Joint Statement of July 18, 2005. However, it does not define what “full” implies, and the interpretations of the two sides have differed right from the beginning. The Indian interpretation of the phrase was articulated by the Prime Minister in his statement on August 17, 2006, according to which this implied technologies related to “all aspects of the complete nuclear fuel cycle” (emphasis added), including those related to enrichment and reprocessing. The U.S. negotiators have, on the other hand, made it clear in the congressional hearings of November 2005 and April 2006 that it could not include enrichment, reprocessing and heavy water technologies - termed as Sensitive Nuclear Technologies (SNTs) - because of domestic policies, and this is reflected in the Hyde Act as well. Significantly, the 123 Agreement of August 3, 2007, dropped the word “all”. The government was forced to back down on this, but the Prime Minister maintained in his August 13, 2007, statement that the concept of full civil nuclear cooperation had been clearly enshrined in the agreement. While now acknowledging that the U.S. had a long-standing policy of not transferring the SNTs, he added that the agreement provided for such transfers through a “forward-looking language”, which required an amendment to the agreement.
Answer to Q. 4 in the letter, (the US State Department letter – A Sen) however, gives the U.S. perspective: “[W]hile the proposed U.S.-India Agreement provides for transfer of items in question, as a framework agreement it does not compel any such transfers and as a matter of policy the U.S. does not transfer dual-use items for use in sensitive nuclear facilities.” Answer to Q. 5 goes on to say:
“Consistent with standing U.S. policy, the U.S. government will not assist India in the design, construction or operation of SNTs through the transfer of dual-use items, whether under the Agreement or outside the Agreement.” The administration further added in its answer to Q. 6: “The Administration does not plan to negotiate an amendment to the proposed U.S.-India Agreement to transfer to India sensitive nuclear facilities or critical components to such facilities.” Response to Q. 9 further clarifies that only if India developed facilities as part of a bilateral or a multinational programme could such dual-use transfers be considered as per exceptions provided by the Hyde Act…” (NUCLEAR DEAL: Hidden side)
So, cooperation will be far from complete. By now it is clear that there are no legally binding assurances on the US for fuel supplies but India has accepted the IAEA safeguards in perpetuity. To make matters worse for us, the NSG members privately agreed in Vienna not to sell sensitive technologies to India in the “foreseeable future”, said a Washington Post report. Actually this understanding helped persuade several sceptical member states to support the waiver. While such agreements are not binding, the Post and some other analysts like Siddharth Varadarajan report that NSG countries were planning to “tighten up” the rules on such sales in near future (rather than causing a diplomatic rupture at this moment).
During the period since July 2005, while the nuclear deal was being negotiated, Indian foreign policy came under increasing US influence: the vote against Iran in IAEA, downplaying the Russia-China-India trilateral dialogue format while upgrading relations with Israel, and so on. And why not? As the Hyde act explicitly states and other US statements/documents reiterate, a fundamental condition of the 123 agreement is that Indian foreign policy has to be congruent with that of the US. We can already see this even more glaringly than in the past. We shall limit ourselves to just a couple of examples.
Promoting India as a counterweight to China -- a prospective member of a planned “Asian NATO” -- has been an important US consideration for lifting sanctions on its nuclear activities. Not surprisingly, we saw a lot of China-bashing during and just after the NSG negotiations. Taking their cue from the National Security Adviser MK Narayanan and others, corporate media managers cried themselves hoarse complaining about China’s alleged behind-the-scene manoeuvres aimed at obstructing the waiver in favour of India. Now it is true that the People’s Daily lambasted Washington for its “multiple standards” in regard to the nuclear non-proliferation regime. But the criticism was focused on the US. In Vienna, having aired its views, China moved on to support the consensus rather than exercise its prerogative to block it.
Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi therefore stood on solid ground when he told CNN-IBN during his recent visit to India: “facts speak louder ... than some reports”. Significantly, the Indian Foreign Minister willy-nilly endorsed this statement within a few days, by which time the government’s immediate purpose -- deflecting public attention from the core issue of India paying a disproportionately high price for the NSG waiver -- had been served.
Another country with which India’s relations are coming very manifestly under the US shadow happens to be Iran. The Hyde Act contained several clauses stipulating India’s cooperation with US policy on Iran. Now in the report to the Congress pursuant to Section 104(c) of the Hyde Act, the Bush administration cited India’s votes against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency as part of “several steps” New Delhi has taken “to support the U.S.” in its efforts to “dissuade, isolate, and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran”. The Presidential Determination also states: “India will now support the United States and international efforts to prevent the spread of enrichment and reprocessing technologies to any State that does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment or reprocessing plants.” Evidently, India has succumbed to US pressure to deny a very friendly country the right to fuel enrichment (which cannot be equated with nuclear weaponisation) it has as a signatory to the NPT under Article IV of that charter.
Rather than bartering out our national sovereignty in this way, we could easily take recourse to several other options for meeting our energy needs. For instance, we can speed up the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project, which have a much shorter gestation period and would have been a far cheaper source of energy.
According to the joint statement of Nepalese and Indian Prime Ministers issued recently in New Delhi, the two countries will urgently tap the vast water resources in the region for generation of hydroelectricity and other purposes like irrigation and flood control. Sincere efforts in this direction could, in addition to easing our power problems, indeed yield a very important political and diplomatic gain: genuine friendship and close cooperation with the rising republican Nepal. However, successive Indian governments have shown little appreciation of this emerging reality and as evidenced by the recent Kosi floods, even the current water-sharing treaties with Nepal are observed only in breaches by India.
Given its climatic conditions, our country has a vast potential for generating solar and wind energy. We have developed good technological expertise too in these areas and with further research costs can be brought down considerably for these cleanest sources of energy. The same applies to coal-based thermal power, where a lot of progress can be made in terms of pollution control and capacity utilisation if improved technology (which is already in use in the US and other countries) is pressed into service.
And if we wish to keep the nuclear option open, or if at all we have to use a limited amount of nuclear energy, why should we not concentrate on the thorium-based fast breeder reactors or FBRs, given our vast reserves of this particular fuel? This option, like that of emphasising renewable energy sources, would also help promote indigenous research and development.
In sum, the less we look to the US and other big powers for technology, equipments and materials, and the more we rely on our huge natural and human resources, the more shall we achieve self-reliance not only in generation of energy, but in science and technology and in overall economic development, for energy lies at the heart of progress in agriculture, industry and services. What is required for this is a clear, innovative vision -- a progressive, pro-people, environment-friendly national energy policy.
But this is something we can never expect from the present dispensation. On the contrary, it has come up with plans to amend existing laws to allow private, including foreign, players into the lucrative field of atomic power generation and to reformulate the national energy policy on that basis. No wonder, both American and Indian Chambers of commerce have greeted the winds of change and drawn up detailed plans of huge investments in this high margin sector. What is worse, the UPA government has deliberately misinformed and misled the nation in numerous ways. The US State Department letter, which found mention in the Washington Post in May and July, was certainly no secret to the Indian government. But the important document was kept secret by common consent of the “strategic partners” to keep the Indian public in the dark, lest the US-India accord should run into rougher weather. This was considered necessary because the authentic US clarifications give the lie to almost every assurance made by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his colleagues to the people of India. They also kept us in the dark regarding India’s “Letter of Intent” referred to above (in this case responsible ministers were saying that India had no particular preference for US and was ready to start nuclear trade talks with France and Russia immediately) and irritants like the ongoing dispute between India and the U.S. over the American claim to having certain “vested rights” over the Tarapur reactors despite the expiration of the 1963 bilateral agreement.
Yes, such are the ways of world politics -- the ways of big business, big media and big powers. But this is not our way. The aam admi has a very different set of interests and concerns. So the only course left to us is to further intensify popular movement and that at three levels. One, expose the real worth of the nuclear deal -- with all its bilateral and multilateral ramifications -- as an egoistic exercise in satisfying the ruling elite’s chauvinist supremacist ambitions under US tutelage and its greed for mega profits, with little to contribute by way of actually meeting India’s energy needs. Two, counterpunch and deflate the nuclear euphoria to bring to the forefront the struggles against burning problems like price rise and pauperisation. Three, intensify the battle to scrap the nuclear deal and the Indo-US strategic partnership and defeat any government that follows the pro-US course.
NOT just Left and anti-nuke activists, even a strong section of scientists from India's nuclear establishment expressed strong objection to the Indo-US Nuke Deal, questioning its inflated claims, and expressing apprehensions about its implications for India's independent decision-making. Senior scientists strongly opposed Government seeking the IAEA Board approval on the Indo-US accord before debating it within the UPA-Left Committee.
"We are strongly of the opinion that the Government should not proceed to seek IAEA Board approval for the current draft safeguards agreement, until its implications are debated more fully within the country, or at least within the UPA-Left Committee," they said.
In a joint statement, P K Iyengar, former chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, A Gopalakrishnan, former head of Atomic Energy Regulatory Board and A N Prasad, former Director of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, said that the agreement should also be discussed with a group of experts who were not party to the IAEA negotiations.
They said there was a "great deal of disquiet" among the scientific community at large at "this critical juncture" when the government was about to rush the safeguards agreement to the IAEA "without giving its details to the UPA-Left Committee created specifically for a joint evaluation of the deal".
"There are several other key safeguards-related issues of crucial importance, for which no one, including the UPA-Left Committee which the government created, has been provided answers," the scientists said.
They said none of the issues raised by them could be addressed adequately and in an acceptable manner "unless the entire safeguards agreements and its associated papers are made available to the UPA-Left Committee for their evaluation".
They were also of the view that the documents should be made available to a set of independent national experts who have so far not been part of the government's negotiations with the IAEA.
The scientists apprehended that once the deal was in place, India's commercial nuclear interactions with the US as well as with any other country would be firmly controlled from Washington via the stipulations of the Hyde Act, 2006, enforced through the stranglehold which the US retains on the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).
"Any argument to the effect that the deal will be governed only by the bilateral 123 agreement is untenable, because this agreement in turn is anchored in US domestic laws, which include the Hyde Act," they said.
Noting that power would come at a much higher cost, they wondered whether India needed "this mythical extra energy security" through this deal with the additional burden of subjugating the freedom to pursue a foreign policy and indigenous nuclear R and D programme on its own.
ALL along, the Manmohan Singh Government in its eagerness to qualify for the Indo-US Nuke Deal, had shown its willingness to jettison India’s long-standing relations with Iran and scuttle the India-Pakistan-Iran pipeline project, clearly under US pressure.
Not only did India vote against Iran twice at the IAEA, India has time and again created hurdles for the deal, raising security issues and asking for third party certification of reserves. However, during Iranian President Ahmedinejad’s visit to India in April 2008, it seemed that there was hope yet for the pipeline, and a 45-day deadline was agreed upon to iron out all the pending issues related to the pipeline. By June, however, news reports suggested that India-Iran talks had stalled again, with the UPA Government buckling under US pressure and asking the oil ministry to “go slow” on further negotiations. The meeting of oil ministers of the three countries that was to take place in June 2008 was postponed, and the 45-day deadline to sort out the “safety and security issues” concerning the project has expired.
In October 2008, India skipped yet another crucial meeting on the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, attended by officials from Iran and Pakistan. US External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee is expected to travel to Iran by the end of October – it remains to be seen if he keeps his appointment. The UPA Government’s deliberate scuttling of the gas pipeline project proves that increased energy resources is the least of their concerns – their moves are entirely guided by US diktats.
Indian people will not forgive such a blatant sell-out by the UPA Government of India’s own interests to the US’ strategic interests, all in the name of a ‘strategic partnership’ with the imperialist superpower. We must demand that the UPA Government stop playing with the pipeline project, and must positively clinch the pipeline deal with Iran and Pakistan.
THE BJP and NDA are only too happy to be subservient allies of the imperialist USA – their only condition is that they should have the hegemonic status in the subcontinent and be USA’s local cop on the beat in this region. It is well known that Vajpayee as PM had initiated the process of the Indo-US Nuke Deal, and reportedly, Jaswant Singh had congratulated the UPA policy makers who negotiated the Deal on “a job well done”. So, the sole concern on the Nuke Deal professed by the BJP is based on a bomb-based jingoism. For all its ‘bomb-astic’ expressions of nationalism, the BJP’s position on the Deal as well as on all other matters of national interest smacks of servility to the imperialist US.
The BJP claims to oppose the Indo-US Nuke Deal because, according to them, it will restrict India from developing its military nuclear potential – i.e, bombs. Its own claim to nationalism is based on Pokhran II – which it projected as a “Hindu bomb” which it tested in defiance of US sanctions.
The truth, however, is rather different.
The fact is that it is Pokhran II which placed India’s neck firmly in the US’ strategic noose – the Nuke Deal pursued by the UPA regime is merely tightening that noose.
The US imposed sanctions on India post-Pokhran, seriously affecting our nuclear programme. If the sanctions were a stick, the offer of relaxing the sanctions became the carrot that the US periodically held out in order to manipulate and induce India to tune its foreign and domestic policies in line with US interests. India had, prior to Pokhran II had a consistent position of refusing to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), on the grounds that the CTBT could not genuinely promote non-proliferation since the countries like the US which have acquired major stockpiles of nuclear weapons exempted themselves from any commitment to giving up nuclear weapons. Rather it allows these nations, with the most frightening arsenal of nuclear weapons, and a history of warmongering (the US is the only country ever to have dropped nuclear bombs on innocent people) to police the nuclear (and general political) behaviour of other nations! As one commentator remarked, CTBT was "like entrusting armed bandits to guard men and women in a village."
After Pokhran, the Vajpayee Government began to signal its willingness to sign the CTBT and pander to those armed bandits. The Vajpayee Government sent its emissary Jaswant Singh to have a series of secret, behind-the-curtain talks with Strobe Talbott, who had been Deputy Secretary of State in Clinton’s regime. Talbott tells us in his book Engaging India, that Jaswant Singh and he were both part of “a coordinated effort to improve the climate for consideration of the CTBT in India.” If the CTBT had been signed according to Atal Behari Vajpayee’s plans – would India have been ‘free to test’ new bombs, as BJP claims?
The worst was that the Vajpayee Govt was careful to hide its shameful manoeuvres and sell-outs from the democratic knowledge, supervision or consent of the Indian people. All Jaswant Singh’s talks with Talbott were held, neither in the US nor in India, but at various European locations, so as to keep the meetings secret from members of the public of both nations.
And of course, who can forget the shameful spectacle of the NDA Defence Minister George Fernandes subjecting India to humiliation by allowing himself to be ‘strip-searched’ at the US airport! That incident was a symbol of the shamefully subservient, supplicant relationship that the Vajpayee Govt forged with the US.
To sum up: the BJP’s war-cry of ‘we’ll test more bombs’ is hollow because it was willing to sign the unequal CTBT treaty, which would in any case have restricted India’s right to test nuclear weapons. More importantly: More bombs do not mean more freedom and self-respect, rather the opposite. Pokhran II eroded our freedom and paved the way for US intervention in our affairs: more bombs and arms race, even if blessed by the US, would only serve to mire India deeper in the web of the US’ imperialist designs.
Meeting US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her visit to India after the clinching of the Deal (October 4, 2008),BJP President and wannabe Prime Minister assured her that his party was “all for India’s strategic ties with the USA.”
The BJP, during the NDA regime, had proposed a ‘US-Israel-India axis’ – i.e supporting Israel in its occupation of Palestine and the US in its war and occupation of Iraq. Finding their own internal communal fascist policy to be in line with the racist US-led war on terror, the BJP promptly offered India’s services as a ‘natural’ ally of the US in the so-called ‘clash of civilizations’ against Islam and China. Immediately post-Pokhran II, Vajpayee had written to US President Clinton, trying to secure US support for India’s bomb, based on false claims that the Indian bomb would be a useful weapon against US enemies in the region – mainly China!
The Vajpayee regime was quite willing to send Indian troops to offer relief to the US troops occupying Iraq – only nation-wide protests forced them to drop the idea. Today, the US, in return for the Nuke Deal, wants India to help it wage unjust war on Iran.
The BJP has also made it clear that it is not even opposed to the Indo-US Nuke Deal as such. In his 21 July speech in Parliament during the trust vote debate, Advani clearly said that all that he wanted was to renegotiate the deal. The first steps towards this Deal were initiated during the Vajpayee regime. Strobe Talbott, who had been US Secretary of State during the Vajpayee regime, has revealed recently that the Vajpayee regime would happily have settled for even less had the Clinton regime offered it to them. Initially, the BJP in fact maintained a silent and tacit approval of the Deal. Only opportunist compulsions forced it finally to take up a posture of opposition. As recently as in March, PM Manmohan Singh hailed Vajpayee as ‘Bhishma Pitamah’ (grand patriarch of Indian politics) and asked him to support the Deal in ‘national interest.’
Finally, we should all recall one particular striking example of how the BJP backtracked on its ‘opposition’ to Congress’ patronage of US MNC Enron, and how both sold out India’s interests and helped a corrupt US multinational loot India in the name of supplying us with power. The BJP accused the Congress of striking an unprincipled deal with US MNC Enron for its power project at Dabhol, Maharashtra. But the Vajpayee Government, tasting power for just thirteen days in 1996, tried, in those 13 days, to rush through approval of the terms of the Enron agreement by a cabinet decision without the knowledge or approval of Parliament! The BJP-Shiv Sena government in Maharashtra not only approved Phase I of the Dabhol project but also re-negotiated an expanded project with Enron including Phase II. Fuel and power policy were changed to suit Enron, introducing the policy of using naphtha as fuel. Soon after, Enron’s Dabhol Power Corporation began supplying electricity to Maharashtra at a price seven times higher than other electricity costs in India. A huge crisis resulted for the Maharashtra State Electricity Board, which was forced to foot the Bill. Corruption charges crippled Enron in the US later. But even the project was no longer in existence, the plants using naphtha, which had no use any more, had to be discarded.
To sum up: the BJP has no principled opposition either to the unequal and anti-national Nuke Deal nor to the imperialist US, and our anti-imperialist struggle will have to challenge and resist the BJP’s hollow nationalist posturing, communal jingoism and bomb-war-mongering at the same time as we resist the UPA Government’s betrayal of national sovereignty.
IN the course of the Nuke Deal debate, there were unsavoury attempts to communalise the debate by associating the opposition to the Deal with the Muslim community. It began with the Prime Minister’s statement, at the time of opposition to Bush’s visit and India’s vote against Iran at the IAEA, that the nation’s foreign policy was being “communalised.” The PM’s implication was that opposition to India enslaving itself to US imperialism was merely to do with ‘Muslim sentiment’ – and that Muslims opposing such policies were essentially anti-national. On the other side of the fence, Mayawati said the nuclear deal was anti-Muslim and we heard a politburo member of CPI(M) warning Mulayam that he would lose Muslim votes for supporting the deal. Amar Singh in reply said the nuclear deal was approved by some Muslim theologians and sought to neutralise his party’s support to the deal with America by the mischievous and misleading declaration that Barack ‘Hussein’ Obama might be the next US President and even he was in favour of the Deal. In reaction to such competing communal discourse, some sections from among the minorities have responded by asking Muslims to stay away from expressing their opposition to the foreign policy pursued by the Government.
Associating the Deal with the Muslim community, whether by opponents of the Deal or by its supporters, is highly dubious tactics. Tomorrow, if BJP ever comes to power and renegotiates the Deal, all opposition to the Deal or to other pro-imperialist actions (such as, say, support to US aggression against Iran or Pakistan) will be branded as ‘Muslim appeasement’ and Muslims will be targeted as “anti-national” and accused of wanting to “hold the country’s progress back.” On the other hand, it is also mischievous and condemnable to demand the Muslims ought not to intervene on matters of national policy. We are for the fullest and outspoken participation of Muslims, as of all other citizens, in all aspects of Indian policy including foreign policy – and no one should seek to question such participation.
TO bite or not to bite, that was the question. And by the time the Left watchdog overcame the Hamletian dilemma and decided to act, it had already lost its teeth. Out-flanked by the SP-Congress marriage of convenience on the issue of the nuclear deal, the Left Front no longer remained the sole arbiter of the UPA Government’s fate. The CPI(M)-led Left Front withdrew its support to the UPA Government – but only when that support had become superfluous. As a result, the gesture of withdrawal was not enough to stop the Nuke Deal in its tracks.
To strengthen the resistance of the people and the country to the growing imperialist offensive and the pro-imperialist treachery of the ruling classes, the anti-imperialist forces and especially the Left ranks must draw appropriate lessons from the most telling and educative experience of the UPA-Left alliance.
The CPI(M)-led Left provided crucial support to the UPA government since its inception to July 9, 2008. The alliance was initially sought to be justified in the name of the political compulsion of keeping the BJP out of power, and subsequently the Left leadership began claiming a series of additional gains including slowing down of neo-liberal reforms, passage of pro-people pro-poor legislations and even success in stopping the UPA from going ahead with the operationalisation of the nuclear deal! All these claims now stand exposed as empty self-deceptive boasts – unaffordably expensive illusions that have only allowed the Congress to have its way while allowing the CPI(M) to have its say! Over the last few years, the BJP has come to power in state after state, and it is now crystal clear that the operationalisation of the deal was never halted even as the CPI(M) kept exchanging notes with the government. Curiously enough, a CPI(M) parliamentarian bravely claimed in the course of the debate that it had given the Congress a debit card, but the Congress did not know its limits of withdrawal. The CPI(M) should realise that the Congress has cleverly emptied the entire parliamentary account of the CPI(M), leaving the latter with the stark choice of either lamenting or celebrating its new state of bankruptcy!
Forces like the SP, RJD and DMK that enabled the Congress to sail through the trust vote also provided a telling example of the utter futility of the CPI(M)’s theory and practice of the ‘secular front’. All these years the CPI(M) delinked ‘secularism’ from democracy and anti-imperialism and grounded its entire tactical line around the single-point agenda of somehow keeping the BJP out of power. The line has now boomeranged on the CPI(M) with the Congress and most of CPI(M)’s staunch allies – only the other day the CPI(M)’s Coimbatore Congress identified the SP as a friendly force and a key component of a third front – now accusing the CPI(M) of weakening the ‘secular’ cause! The allegations came not just from outside but also from within. While the maverick West Bengal minister Subhas Chakraborty, a known Jyoti Basu protégé and now member of the party’s West Bengal secretariat, accused the CPI(M) centre of deviating from the party line adopted in the recent Coimbatore Congress of the party, the defiant chuckle of Speaker Somnath Chatterjee kept mocking at the CPI(M)’s tactical line through the two days of televised trust vote debate.
However much the CPI(M) may now fret and strut over the 'principled' withdrawal of support to the friendly government, that does not cut much ice any more. Given the way the Left leaders played the pause-go-halt game all these years, many people reasonably believe that the recent decision has been taken only out of pragmatic electoral considerations. The CPI(M), they feel, could hardly afford to go to polls as an ally of a ruling party that presides over the steepest price spiral in recent history. A pretext was needed for pulling out of the second tier of the government, and that has now been found. No serious, long-term anti-imperialism was involved here, no real change of track.
The lessons for the Left are therefore clear enough. Secularism and anti-imperialism must be treated as inseparable aspects of any minimum democratic programme. Any opportunist delinking of different aspects of a democratic programme to suit immediate parliamentary needs can only prove fatal and counter-productive for the Left movement. It has also been established beyond doubt that any Left party that attaches topmost priority to the task of running stable governments within a bourgeois system, delinking those governments from the agenda of people’s movement and any kind of Left orientation in the name of adjusting with limitations imposed by a globalising state; that starts taking pride in becoming responsible and efficient parties of governance even going to the extent of perpetrating state terror and mass killings to uphold the banner of bourgeois efficiency and responsibility cannot master the language and role of a democratic opposition.
IN the preceding pages, we have seen the true nature of the Nuke Deal as a charter of modern day slavery to US imperialist interests. The UPA has exposed its true colours as the Unashamed Partners of America, and the BJP too provided ample evidence of its well-known loyalty to Washington.
Now that the Deal is done, the real battle in the court of the people has begun. And it’s not just the fine print of the Deal, but the very character of our democracy and freedom that is at stake in this battle.
The existing Indian constitution does not require parliamentary ratification of major international treaties, let alone any popular referendum. A few wise men making up the council of ministers can impose any treaty on the country, be it the case of making India subservient to the unequal clauses of WTO or placing the country at the strategic disposal of the American superpower. Yet if the nuclear deal got debated several times in Parliament and the government had to resort to all kinds of manipulations, monetary or otherwise, to cobble a victory it only reflects the groundswell of popular opposition already generated by the deal.
In spite of all the pro-deal hype generated by the ruling classes and their political and intellectual representatives and media managers, the people of the country have enough understanding of the real meaning of imperialism, US imperialism at that. Two hundred years of colonial rule may have schooled and trained a comprador ruling class in India, but the people have not forgotten the pain and humiliation of colonial bondage and they are certainly not enthralled by the spectacle of the growing imperialist invasion of our economy and steady erosion of our sovereignty and autonomy to pursue policies in our own national interest. If the idea of the nuclear deal has already generated so much debate in the country, real life experience of all its ominous implications is surely capable of steeling a much more powerful patriotic-democratic resistance in the coming days.
Following the failure of the impotent parliamentary opposition to stop the Manmohan government's shameless run after that charter of modern-day national slavery -- the Indo-US nuclear deal -- the working people and patriotic-democratic intelligentsia of the entire country must rise against the pro-imperialist and anti-democratic treachery perpetrated by the ruling classes and their thoroughly corrupt and opportunist political representatives. The UPA government’s anti-people pro-imperialist policies must be resisted and defeated by the united resolve and strength of an awakened people. The BJP’s bid to claim ‘nationalist’ opposition to the Nuke Deal must be vigorously challenged and its true loyalty to US imperialism exposed. Revolutionary communists must take the plunge to intensify and win this crucial battle in the days to come.
The task of the Left today is not to offer piecemeal opposition to this or that ‘deal’ with the US but to resist the entire spectrum of Indo-US strategic partnership and educate the masses about the inherently and incorrigibly anti-people, pro-imperialist and treacherous character of parties like the Congress and BJP which should never be relied on again. By declaring that they are ready to reunite with the Congress after the polls if the leopard promises to change its spots, sections of CPI and CPI(M) leadership have already begun hampering this education. The revolutionary Left cautions the people against such opportunist vacillations in the name of tactics and calls for a consistent, long-term struggle against imperialism and all its lackeys in India.
In the first place, I wonder where this ultra-nationalist frenzy, this jingoism unleashed through the tests will lead us to? ...it has to have its fallout on national politics as well. That is what we witnessed in the wake of the first nuclear test at Pokhran in 1974, when just one year after that Emergency was clamped on the country. ...how far will this building up of ultra-nationalist frenzy, coupled with the nuclear explosions, tolerate the democratic process that is still there in the country?
I would like to point out that it is not a case of testing a single bomb. As a consequence of a nuclear test a whole nuclear stockpile has to be built up. During the past 30 years a whole project has been going on in the name of peaceful application of atomic power and enormous funds have been allocated under this head in successive budgets, an expenditure that has never been subject to public scrutiny and any kind of accountability. Gradually, a whole structure, a giant bureaucratic-scientific establishment has been built. And now there are attempts to militarise the whole national economy!
(Vinod Mishra, Liberation, July 1998)
The US today has a stock of seven lakh bombs and spends 35 billion dollars every year (or 96 million dollars a day) in maintaining the nuclear establishment there. The total amount spent by US in its nuclear programme in the last half century is around 5.5 trillion dollars. …
The US is an imperialist country and draws a huge surplus through colonial and neo-colonial exploitation from all over the world and hence can bear this amount without many problems. But in the case of USSR (till 1989) which did not enjoy any such advantage, it was becoming gradually impossible to afford such a huge expenditure. And what we have seen is that the huge nuclear stock that they piled up to safeguard socialism from imperialist attacks ultimately proved to be counterproductive and did play a crucial role in dismantling the socialist system itself. It became impossible for a socialist state in the long run to satisfy the voracious need of the nuclear establishment. And in their attempt to do this, they perilously neglected the priority sectors of industry leading to a total distortion of the economy and ultimately to a defeat of socialism.
(Vinod Mishra, Liberation, September 1998)
CPI(ML) has opposed the Indo-US Nuke Deal as well as every manifestation of US imperialism; and has also boldly and consistently mobilised people against all kinds of nuclear jingoism.
