Towards the end game

The Congress8217;s postponing the moment of reckoning has already compromised the deal in several ways. First, it is not entirely clear that India will approach the NSG with the strongest possible hand. Contrary to official spin, our standing amongst NSG countries has already been compromised. Second, the Congress8217;s argument that the last weeks of the Bush administration are the last chance we have for this deal is, in a peculiar way, paradoxical. For, as everyone knows, the really contentious issues are not the text of the 123 Agreement itself. They have to do with the surrounding context in which it is embedded. On the US side, it is the political price the United States intends to extract for the deal and the ambiguity over how the agreement will in future be interpreted in relation to other US legislation.

A case could be made that these are not matters that can be resolved through legal nit picking; they essentially turn on how future American administrations interpret and follow up on the deal. If we suppose that the favourable interpretation given to the agreement will depend upon the contingencies of the administration in the US rather than upon the structural logic of the deal, then this attenuates the deal8217;s attractiveness. This would have mattered less if we had put in place the other contracts and legislative protections that would have operationalised this deal while the supposedly favourable Bush administration was in office. But now the case of those who think that the deal should be reconsidered in light of the new political winds blowing in the US becomes more plausible.

On the Indian side, the benefits of the deal depend on our capacity for follow-up: how we nurture our indigenous scientific establishment, how we manoeuvre our foreign policy independence, and how we create the regulatory framework that will enable a nuclear industry to take off. On the first, we have been a dismal failure, progress on the second is debatable, and the prospects of getting an appropriate domestic regulatory framework for exploiting the full potential of nuclear power domestically look thin for the next few years. Domestic uranium mining and potentially giving access to the indigenous private sector remain a distant gleam. In short, the government consistently gave signals that it was more interested in the deal than it was in doing all the things that secure independent nuclear power. It is its lack of initiative on so many other related fronts over the past couple of years that leads people to wonder whether the deal is more important to us, or the objectives it is meant to serve. Have we not confused ends and means?

This question becomes more pressing in light of the fact that there has not been a single issue of abiding national importance on which the prime minister has asserted his authority. The prime minister8217;s own agenda was consistently sidelined, whether it was administrative reform, new paradigms of delivery of services to the poor, further push on economic reform or fiscal responsibility. He was a silent spectator on issues of overwhelming national importance, like the handling of the poison of caste, or the decimation of higher education. Even his potentially interesting initiatives on Pakistan or Kashmir are threatening to unravel because of a lack of follow- through. In short, it was naive of the prime minister to suppose that he could abdicate an assertion of power on other issues of national importance and carry credibility on this one issue. All those who fuelled rumours about the PM being in relative incommunicado for three or four crucial days last week did him a disservice. Instead of finding an opportunity to take his case to the public, instead of showing visible public leadership in a moment of serious economic crisis, he gave the impression of going into a private sulk over the deal.

The following question has been raised, rightly. Should not the word of the prime minister of India mean something in the international context? The answer is yes. But there is a larger question behind this one. Should not the office of the prime minister mean something more generally? The Congress, whatever it may say outwardly, has over the last four years systematically destroyed the stature of this office: itinerant ministers have upstaged him on policy issues, and even at the best of times the PM was made to look like an official in waiting. Is it any surprise that the question of the prime minister8217;s authority does not evoke any excited resonance?

For four years, the Congress has dug itself into a deep hole, frittering away a golden opportunity to transform both politics and policy in this country. And the tragedy is that it did this when circumstances in the country were very propitious. If the Congress has the minimal degree of self respect, it has no choice but to push for the deal. But let us not harbour the illusion that this is about statesmanship or sacrifice. Those require both a credible vision of a larger purpose and a willingness to take genuine risks.

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi pratapbmehtagmail.com