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| PM is Risking national interest | | |
Compelled by political pressure from all sides, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Parliament finally defined the limit of concessions beyond which he thinks he cannot go in placating the United States in the proposed nuclear deal without destabilising his government. But this belated spine-straightening act may spur the non-proliferationists in Washington, who want to leave India no wriggle room, into insisting the Senate version of the amended US Atomic Energy Act containing many of the measures the PM has, in effect, dubbed "deal killers," become law. Short of the US Congress removing the offensive provisions or Manmohan Singh going back on his word, a breakdown of the deal is imminent.
Indeed, it is the politics of US Congress’ non-proliferation law-making that all along held out the hope that India would escape strategic strangulation by default, particularly because the Manmohan Singh regime has not shown it can discern what is in the country’s best interests, leaving it vulnerable to the official American line that gives the impression of mutual gain when actually it mostly serves US interests. I said this as a panellist in a discussion held at the India International Centre on August 3, 2005 — a prognosis proved right a year later. The Prime Minister keeps justifying what he has done by invoking "enlightened national interest." But according to the evidence thus far, this seems only a rhetorical veil behind which he has felt free to make indefensible concessions.
Understandably, the Prime Minister did not touch upon his main rationale for the nuclear deal. There being simply no strategic sense or logic, as this analyst had noted soon after the July 18 Statement (A Civilian Nuclear Dependency, The Op-Ed Page, August 13, 2005) and in many op-ed pieces in this paper since, in curbing the natural augmentation of the Indian nuclear forces or in sacrificing the independence of the country’s nuclear weapons programme in return for imported reactors secured at great public expense to produce less than six per cent of the projected total energy production in India in the year 2035. Especially when the indigenous upscaled INDU reactors and the 700 MW advanced pressurised heavy water reactor now in its final design stage, without any downside, will do just as well.
The purchase of foreign reactors fuelled by low-enriched uranium, the supply of which can be cut off at any time without penalty to the seller country and with no way for India legally to recover the fifty-odd billion dollars shelled out for them is, moreover, a boondoggle waiting to happen. Unless, of course, Manmohan Singh, in his finite wisdom, thinks this vast sum chicken-feed and the nightmarish economic consequences of junking these reactors manageable. Or, worse, he does not foresee the need for India ever to test again. Or, still worse, he concedes the possibility of a military need for testing to arise but does not care that a future Indian government, because of this deal, will be saddled with a gigantic strategico-political-cum-economic mess. Any which way one views the deal, the Manmohan Singh regime appears singularly short-sighted for pushing it.
Which brings us to the Prime Minister’s "risk taking" prowess he boasted about in Parliament when referring to the economic reforms, he claimed he, initiated. Truth be told, the credit for economic reforms is almost entirely the late Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao’s. Here’s what happened on the day in 1992 when finance minister Manmohan Singh outlined for Rao the first Congress Party budget after its return to power. According to a senior official present on that occasion, Narasimha Rao, given the parlous economic situation India was in, rejected it outright as a "business as usual-budget" and ordered Dr Manmohan Singh to work up an all new budgetary scheme — which made his reputation — geared to economic liberalisation and reform. But as governor of the Reserve Bank of India he lapsed into his old bureaucratic ways. One of his subordinates recalls how Singh, during his RBI tenure, "abdicated his responsibility" for taking tough decisions, his refrain being "I want no controversies"! It is a refrain reportedly now heard in the PMO. In short, whatever else he is, "risk-taker" Manmohan Singh is not. Furthermore, while he may know a lot about economic risk, he knows little about risk in the nuclear scientific and strategic security spheres.
This makes it hard to explain the PM’s terribly risky policy that has offered the United States an opportunity to capitalise on his unsustainable ideas of "civilian nuclear cooperation" to contain India’s nuclear military capabilities. Unless, one factors in Manmohan Singh’s personal bias against nuclear weapons. It may be recalled that successively as finance member in the Atomic Energy Commission, economic adviser to the PM, and finance minister in the Eighties and Nineties, he consistently opposed any large expenditure on strategic programmes and also nuclear testing in 1995. It is doubtful he understands the political value of a meaningful thermonuclear arsenal, wrapped up as his approach seems to be, in the simplistic "guns versus butter" argument that went out with the Sixties, but which opponents within and outside the Indian government, prompted by Washington, utilised to pre-empt nuclear weaponisation by this country for over 30 years. The terrible retardant effects of such thinking on India’s foreign and military policy reach and its diplomatic clout is there for all to see — a whale-sized country has had its impact reduced to that of a minnow.
It was originally Bharatiya Janata Party’s assessment that access to western "dual use" technologies could be bought by show of "nuclear restraint," which flawed premise the Congress Party coalition government adopted. But Manmohan Singh has gone further by interpreting restraint expansively. And there is nobody in his circle to warn him he is doing wrong. Indeed, his government has no experts in nuclear deterrence and strategic policy heuristic even in its extended nuclear decision loop. This is perhaps how the PM wants it. Of the nine members of the Atomic Energy Commission, for instance, only one is a scientist, Dr C.N.R. Rao, the other is its chairman, Anil Kakodkar, an engineer; the rest are, like the Prime Minister himself, terminal bureaucrats (principal private secretary to the PM, cabinet secretary etc). But Manmohan Singh required a nuclear scientist to advance his policy of nuclear compromise, and he found one in Dr R. Chidambaram, the former chairman, AEC, presently adviser on science and technology to the prime minister.
The breakthrough in the nuclear deal with the US — it is not widely known — was, in fact, made by Dr Chidambaram. Accompanying foreign secretary Shyam Saran to Washington in March 2005, Dr Chidambaram, who had opposed nuclear testing in 1995 and after the 1998 tests supported the test moratorium — because he imprudently believes that nuclear simulation, rather than actual physical testing, is enough — reportedly assured senior American officials not only about New Delhi’s readiness to extend its voluntary test ban into a permanent bilateral commitment but, more crucially, to bring the bulk of India’s nuclear programme and the country’s extensive scientific research facilities that feed it, under international safeguards. These assurances suddenly enthused the George W. Bush administration, eventuating in the July 18 Joint Statement three months later and the controversial "separation plan" announced by New Delhi on March 2, 2006.
This separation plan, by including almost every nuclear research centre of repute in the country in the civilian list earmarked for IAEA safeguards, may well finish off all independent nuclear research and development — "dual use" and other, in India. Take for example the Institute for Plasma Physics, Gandhinagar, engaged, among other things, in a fusion project using high-energy electromagnets. Designated as a civilian facility, this "Tokomak" unit can "breed" making it of "proliferation concern" to the US; it can produce Uranium 233 as fuel for reactors by exposing thorium to excess neutrons produced by the plasma at high temperatures. Or, consider the case of the Variable Energy Cyclotron in Kolkata, also in the civilian list. It is likewise jeopardised by safeguards because this accelerator can potentially generate neutrons to produce fissile material for military purposes or to power reactors. An Advanced Accelerator-driven Source for neutrons is, in fact, already operating there. Under the safeguards and Additional Protocol relating to non-weapon states, India will be required to provide a work plan and research agenda for each civilian facility for IAEA to ensure no prohibited (read: remotely weapons-related) work is carried out. New Delhi will soon be disabused by Washington and IAEA of its belief that safeguards will be restricted to imported technology and uranium ore and that research not involving foreign items will be spared attention. In fact, the draft amended US Atomic Energy Act seeks an accounting of even indigenously-mined and processed uranium, what to talk of imported nuclear material.
The key is the safeguards system and Additional Protocol. Originally, the nuclear scientists were at the cutting edge of negotiations on nuclear matters. MEA diplomats, with no technical knowledge and minimal understanding of the nuclear arcana involved, have sidelined them. Even without this self-inflicted handicap, it is doubtful India could have avoided harsh safeguards and Additional Protocol considering that Pakistan and Iran on the IAEA governing board will not allow India to be treated as a nuclear weapon state. Manmohan Singh may not lose sleep over this development — it being the result of the many compromises he has made so far. Thanks to this deal, there will be nothing left of the national interest, only enlightenment after the fact.
Bharat Karnad is Professor at the Centre for Policy Research and author of Nuclear Weapons and Indian Security, 2nd edition
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