Try thinking big

The guessing game’s begun, once again. Will this coalition last? A Machiavellian drama is being played out around the...

The guessing game’s begun, once again. Will this coalition last? A Machiavellian drama is being played out around the nuclear deal, in full glare of studio lights without a thought for how it will serve our national interest.

The nuclear deal is not only about personal legacies. Economically, we know that given our huge and growing dependence on imported hydrocarbons and soaring oil prices, finding indigenous renewable sources of energy is the only feasible way forward. France with 70 percent of its energy needs coming from nuclear generation, Japan with more than 50 percent, Germany at similar levels and China marching ahead with nuclear generation, are not unwise. Yes, nuclear energy will provide only about 10 percent of our energy needs by 2020, if we start now. But it will demonstrate our national will to overcome this constraint and even more important, as Dr. Arunachalam once put it, the impact of 2-3 nuclear reactors simultaneously under construction for the next 20-30 years on the Indian psyche will be tremendous. The sheer scale of engineering, skills and organisation required will transform not just our economy but our national self image. These nuclear generators, located as they must be in green field sites, will certainly reduce the distance between Bharat and India.

Politically too, going ahead with the deal makes eminent sense for the Congress. Not perhaps for the UPA whose other members clearly don’t wish to see a strong Congress enter the electoral arena. The decision to finalize the deal can be and must be explained to the people as an effort to take our energy destiny into our own hands. What better a time to go to the people with the message of self reliance in energy when oil is at $140 a barrel and is seen as the most important cause for the present inflation?

Will it not be political suicide for the Congress to go to the elections as a party that could never stand up to communist blackmail? And what is wrong with forging a strategic relationship with the US — has China not enjoyed three decades of unparalleled growth as a result of its compact with the US, which included acceding to all its requests at the time of China’s WTO ascension?

The prime minister is not one to take unsound and unreasonable stands. Unmindful of his personal loss of face, he goes very far to compromise his position when national interest is at stake. But once he has made up his mind, it is different. He took a long time to make up his mind on signing Article VIII (current account convertibility) but once he did, he achieved it in 1994. He gave his party colleagues and managers more than eight months to bring the coalition partners around and explain to them the economic and political benefits of signing the deal. Now, these party managers should realize that aborting the deal will have greater negative fallout than finalising it.

The PM has also put in enormous efforts to convince the scientific and security establishment that India’s strategic interests will not be compromised. As a member of the National Security Advisory Board, I can vouch for the fact that these issues have been discussed threadbare and in all their aspects, and there is no danger of losing out. The drive to finalize the nuclear deal can be made into as powerful a political mantra as garibi hatao or even jai jawan jai kisan. It took courage, imagination and a huge measure of self confidence for those two leaders to break through ideological cobwebs and vested interests to mobilize people around those slogans. The time has come for the PM to appeal directly to the people and explain how the nuclear deal will contribute to building a stronger India.

The writer is director & chief executive of ICRIER and member, National Security Advisory Board