The story goes that it was when George W Bush found out that India had a billion people that he decided the US had to have a strategic alliance with India. When he met Manmohan Singh, they hit it off immediately. Bush being a devout Christian quoted the Bible to Singh. He was impressed when Manmohan Singh revealed a deep knowledge of the New Testament and quoted extensively from it. Bush was charmed and thus started the first of the personal bond-based relationship between An Indian Prime Minister and a US President.
What has happened over the last few days is an extended replay of that close rapport for the next pair of PM and POTUS. That first encounter signalled India’s desire to abandon its commitment to the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and its determination to show that it had grown up. Bush went out of his way to free India of boycott by the Nuclear Suppliers Group and got India back into the respectable group of nuclear nations.
But that was just a decoy for the real change in the US-India relationship. Manmohan Singh committed India to a ‘just-in-case’ military strategic partnership with the US. It is a secret understanding but at least Manmohan Singh understood the significance of what he had done. He staked the UPA’s survival and won a confidence vote. This incidentally destroyed the Communist Left, which would not have displeased Bush.
Fast forward to last week and we see the sealing of that bond. Nuclear reactors are dangerous things which have a nasty habit of blowing up. Maybe only once in 10 years but they cause incredible amount of damage as we know from a Three Mile island, Chernobyl and Fukushima. Private suppliers of reactors do not want to be liable. Hence the insurance fund, which limits their liability and makes India responsible if a reactor blows up.
This bit of nifty footwork was needed to activate the military deal and attract FDI. Luckily the oil prices having fallen, civilian nuclear energy becomes even more uneconomical than it already was. Electricity supplied by nuclear power is the most expensive form of energy. One can only hope that none of the reactors will be actually used. They can be preserved as evidence of a folly for industrial archaeology.
But the nuclear deal was ever only a fig leaf even when the Bush-Singh deal was signed. The real deal is the strategic partnership. The Chinese know this and bristled immediately at the friendly hugs and chai pe charcha. India has to play this complex strategic game not because it wants to fight China but no country can live without making some provision for the possibility of the worst-case scenario. We paid for such complacency in 1962 and cannot repeat that mistake.
In a way the insurance pool set up for the American nuclear reactors is also designed to guard against a worst-case scenario. If nuclear reactor suppliers are crybabies and need hand-holding, so be it. India cannot be churlish and suffer another Bhopal because the guilty MNC runs away (perhaps aided and abetted by the governments of the day, at state and the Centre). India could use FDI and the alliance.
Indeed it is a wonder why India and the US have taken so long to cement what is a natural partnership of like-minded nations. One reason was American paranoia about Communism during the Cold War days, which began just as India became independent. On India’s side there was a fashionable left-wing penchant for things Soviet and Nehru’s anti-Americanism, inherited from his English education. The MEA continued to be anti-American till very recently, as we saw in the Devyani Khobragade case, which was fought way beyond its worth. (Could that be the reason behind the precipitate removal of the foreign secretary?)
Americans use their immigrant communities as soft power in their foreign relations. Thus a Polish American can be ambassador to Poland, as an Indian American has come to Delhi. India needs to deploy its diaspora creatively in its diplomatic relationships. The Prime Minister was sustained during years as chief minister by the diaspora. He should continue hugging them.
