What ? We Worry?

Even as Indians around the world celebrate the strong support to the nuclear deal.

Even as Indians around the world celebrate the strong support to the nuclear deal in the US Congressional subcommittees last week, there is no respite for the professional worriers in New Delhi.

While the government has made it clear that only the operational parts of the bill passed are of concern, there is a lot of hand-wringing in New Delhi among officials and the opposition parties. Some of them say there is no difference between ‘‘binding’’ and ‘‘non-binding’’ parts of any bill, and that India cannot countenance any language that is ‘‘intrusive’’.

To be sure, the version of the bill passed by the House International Relations Committee talks of securing India’s support to ‘‘dissuade, isolate, and if necessary, sanction and contain Iran’’ for its efforts to acquire N-weapons.

Does this mean, India’s foreign policy has been ‘‘subjugated’’ to the US? This very question, posed by sections of the BJP and some analysts, reflects the mindset of a weak and anxious Third World nation. It also signals the enduring Indian diplomatic obsession with the ‘‘text’’, rather than the ‘‘context’’.

NO one with a sense of political realism in either Washington or New Delhi would believe India’s foreign policy can be dictated by a bill by the US Congress.

The language on Iran was the expression of concern by a key section of the Democrats in the House of Representatives who want to make sure India hears them. It has no operational bearing on either the US legislation or India’s foreign policy.

In any case, India has repeatedly said it is opposed to Iranian proliferation and has voted twice in the International Atomic Energy Agency—in September 2005 and March 2006— against Tehran.

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India’s behaviour was by no means surprising. For no nation would sacrifice its own interests to defend the interest of others.

Even legally, India would be bound by what it negotiates with the US government, not what transpires in the bargaining between the Bush Administration and the US Congress.

As New Delhi negotiates the bilateral framework for nuclear cooperation, often called the 123 agreement, its diplomats are battling over every word to make sure there is no extraneous language or conditions imposed on India.

SOME in India are concerned about a provision in both the House and Senate versions of the Bill that says US nuclear cooperation will cease the moment New Delhi tests another nuclear device.

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Should India be worried about it? Not really. Since May 1998, when it conducted Pokharan II, India has said it has no plans for additional nuclear tests. It was a voluntary decision; no one had asked India for it.

Whether the US will suspend nuclear cooperation would depend upon the larger geopolitical circumstances which trigger an Indian test in future. If it initiates nuclear testing without any provocation, the reaction would be harsh.

But if India were to test in response to a Chinese nuclear test, surely there is no reason for the US to suspend such cooperation.

IT should not be difficult for New Delhi to recognise that politics determines law, not the other way around. As India grows stronger in the coming years, and if China and the US head towards a confrontation, no one in Washington would want to antagonise New Delhi.

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There is also little reason for New Delhi to lose sleep over the provision in the Senate version of the nuclear bill that bars the US from transferring plutonium reprocessing, uranium enrichment and heavy water production technologies and facilities to India.

All three technologies are crucial for the production of nuclear weapons materials. But the fact is that India has already mastered them and is not in the international market for these technologies.

AS it considers the many pinpricks that have been attached to the nuclear legislation in the House and the Senate, India should remain focused like a laser beam on the basics.

For one, there is no free lunch in world affairs. India has to give some thing to get something in return. So long as there is a balance between the two, there should be no reason for nuclear anxiety.

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India needs a change of international rules and the American domestic law to acquire badly needed nuclear reactors and fuel from outside. To get there India has agreed to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities and place the former under international safeguards.

There is nothing in the pieces of legislation approved by the House and Senate committees that threatens the basic framework of this nuclear deal.

It is often said that even paranoids have enemies. But a confident and increasingly powerful India has no reason to conjure up needless nuclear paranoia.