India's credibility will take big hit if deal is nuked
20 Aug 2007, 0001 hrs IST,TNN
NEW DELHI: What will the world look like for India if the India-US nuclear deal is flushed down the Left black hole? Not pretty, lets assure you.
First things first. It will be a blow to the credibility of not just the UPA government but all successive governments. Tomorrow, when you are negotiating a trading agreement with, say, Asean or a multilateral trade deal at the WTO, it is conceivable that India's interlocutors will have little or no faith in the Indian positions, knowing that the government cannot defend a done deal back home.
Diplomatically, it will take India over a decade to recover.
We can kiss UN Security Council ambitions goodbye, forget any breakthrough in the WTO, or be a credible partner in a global enterprise, from providing solutions in Africa to being a factor for security in Asia or fighting terrorism.
Strategically, it would put back India's hopes of becoming a big power. Why, you might ask, after all, there was life before the deal. True. But then, India was not pitching this high. Now India is counted as BRIC-plus, that is, a factor of global security and stability. Dishonouring a deal this size, seriously puts India's ambitions at stake.
Why is this deal important? Because, for the first time, someone has decided to let India have its cake and eat it too. You stay out of the NPT, keep your weapons, refuse fullscope safeguards, and yet get to conduct nuclear commerce in a system that is dead against such a formulation. That's the bottomline of this deal.
Of course, relations with the US will plunge. That's what the Left, too, wants. The question is, will that make India more attractive to China, Russia, France, Japan or even Pakistan?
China only takes India seriously since the deal was born. It's no secret Beijing wants this deal killed.
Will there be another white knight around the horizon? Unlikely on the terms that India has got on the 123. Japan, where India is building its second biggest partnership, will freeze in its tracks. After all,
what's the point of building a $90 billion industrial corridor in India when India can no longer be a credible factor of Asian stability.
This much is clear - the US is streets ahead of its nearest competitor in technology, education and research.
For the past decade, Indian business and middle-class society has decided that this is the way for India to go.
Indian students, too, see the US as their No. 1 destination. These may not be vote banks, but are sections that provide ballast to the larger society. And these sections will be deeply disillusioned.
The nuclear deal is much more than about nuclear energy. Its about breaking through a technology denial regime that has spread across many sectors of India's knowledge economy - from IT to defence, space, pharmaceuticals, clean energy, biotech, you name it.
Because, as every Indian industrialist will tell you, after a certain point, all technology can be described as dual-use, and they are out of reach at present. The single window clearance for India opens up that door and Indian business is raring to go.
The clearest implication for the deal is in India's energy sector, which has lagged behind all other infrastructure areas, and is about the dirtiest. At present, the total size of India's electric power system is 124 GW. By 2020, if India can add 20GW of new nuclear capacity it would save 145 million tonnes of CO2 per year. Put simply, it means more energy, clean energy.
Recently, technology minister Kapil Sibal encapsulated the deal thus: "The deal is important not just for India and the United States. If we want to be key players in the world this relationship is exceptionally important. You shouldn't look at this relationship from the point of view of civil nuclear energy exclusively - that is only part of it. And, that's what people have to understand."
"We are dealing with global issues. We are dealing with a partnership that will allow huge opportunities - both economic and otherwise - to open up for entrepreneurs at both ends in agriculture, clean technologies, environment and water-technologies. There are huge possibilities. When our two nations move forward, we can't get bogged down by debates which are partisan. Because the issue at stake is not nuclear weapons."
For half a century, India and the US were on different sides of an ideological divide. That bred dislike and mistrust, which in many ways has been countered over the last few years. If we go the way we're headed, it will take little to turn this into contempt.
India's credibility will take big hit if deal is nuked-India-The Times of India