Between the ayes

The passage of the civil nuclear liability bill by Lok Sabha is a welcome demonstration of the potential for give-and-take between government and opposition. The vote,with the support of the ruling UPA and the main opposition party,the BJP,clinches the decades-long struggle to end nuclear apartheid that the world had imposed on India,as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh put it in the House on Wednesday. Given the contentiousness and conspiracy theories that have clouded the air,it was also important that the House debate the bill in a measured and transparent way. It did. And with this monsoon session of Parliament being extended to make up a backlog,this show of ability to find common ground must augur well.

For the government,the solidity of a voice vote is a critical achievement. It offsets the loneliness of UPA-I in taking the first major step in ending Indias nuclear isolation with the Indo-US nuclear deal. For reasons of its political posturing then,the BJP chose to oppose an agreement that was entirely in step with efforts made during its stint in power,beginning with the nuclear tests of 1998. That the party,in this new Lok Sabha,accepted the opportunity to participate in shaping the way India would conduct its nuclear commerce is commendable. It extracts the party from a negativity that amounted to not just denying its own legacy,but also removing itself from the broad-based participatory nature of Indias major foreign policies. For all the differences that give oxygen to our noisy politics,big foreign policy positions have tended to be founded on a larger consensus. This is why we welcome the governments overture to the opposition and the oppositions participation in discussing the provisions in the bill,down to the last and.

However,breakthroughs have a way of highlighting other impasses. The point has often enough been made in these columns that the government needs to be more proactive in garnering support to amend the antiquated Land Acquisition Act. In fact,the legislative agenda for this session is long and quite unfulfilled. The treasury benches must reach out to the opposition parties,not just to achieve this agenda,but also to assert the credibility of the legislature especially at a time when MPs are facing a crisis of credibility for so vocally looking out for their salary hikes.