Tags:
Journalism of Courage
It is now up to Congress President Sonia Gandhi to choose between securing India8217;s nuclear future and surviving in power for a few more humiliating months as an abject subaltern of her communist partners. Once India8217;s scientific community satisfied itself on the technical aspects of the civil nuclear initiative, the outstanding questions have been entirely political. Yet, the Congress leadership, unwilling to bite the political bullet, has persisted with the charade of negotiations get the communists to support the culmination of a national effort, undertaken by all governments over the last three and a half decades, to end India8217;s extended nuclear isolation.
Anyone slightly familiar with the political record of our communists, who have never been part of mainstream Indian thinking on foreign policy, or with the ideological blinkers of CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat, would have known that the negotiations with the Left were a fool8217;s errand. Although the civil nuclear initiative was about resuming cooperation with all the major countries in the world, including the United States, Russia, France and Japan, the CPM had convinced itself that the nuclear deal is about 8220;surrendering India8217;s foreign policy autonomy8221; to Washington. It is symptomatic of the Left8217;s inability to understand national interest in a non-polar world. If the communists have unerringly misread India8217;s foreign policy interests, it is refreshing to see Lalu Prasad8217;s Rashtriya Janata Dal own up forcefully to the UPA8217;s most significant foreign policy initiative. It is a sign of the deepening of federalism. Regional parties are not meant to keep their place in coalitions at the Centre just to win endorsement of their local political agendas.
