Irrespective of how the Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver finally goes and whether the road is eventually cleared for Indian nuclear commerce with the rest of the world, it is appropriate to assess the shrill discourse and sheer paranoia of the past week. It will tell Indians a lot about their political establishment and its pretensions to run any sort of a great power.

Irrespective of how the Nuclear Suppliers Group waiver finally goes and whether the road is eventually cleared for Indian nuclear commerce with the rest of the world, it is appropriate to assess the shrill discourse and sheer paranoia of the past week. It will tell Indians a lot about their political establishment and its pretensions to run any sort of a great power.

Honesty and transparency -- even brute bluntness -- may have helped. Mr Manmohan Singh's image as a straight-talking man could have won him adherents if he had, for instance, frankly admitted that India's insistence on the unmitigated right to a nuclear test or its obsolete notions of absolute sovereignty were costing it economically. Instead, he found solace in the labyrinthine 'system' that constitutes the Government of India.

Far from the promise of open Government -- and a free debate of the choices before India -- a conspiratorial, over-secretive mantle seemed to cloak the nuclear initiative. A good, fair deal was unfortunately clouded by suspicion and intrigue.

Nevertheless, it is scarcely a good idea -- not for a parent, not for a nation -- to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Disquiet with the manner in which the Congress handled the deal should not automatically translate into an inability to appreciate the deal.

Unfortunately, it is here that elements of the political class and the intellectual community have been found wanting. A substantial, vociferous section is still living out the paranoia and hysteria of the 1970s. These people are completely out of tune with 21st century India, its needs, hopes and aspirations. They may see themselves as the ultimate nationalists but in their cussed opposition to the deal, they have displayed amazingly poor confidence in their own country.

Three examples would suffice. First, when Mr Howard Berman, chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, released correspondence between the US Administration and his predecessor, let us be clear what he was trying to achieve. As a reading of the letter makes apparent, there is ample space for manoeuvre that both the Indian and American sides left each other while negotiating the 123 Agreement.

Put pithily, India reserves the right to test and the US reserves the right to respond to the test. There could well be consequences, but there is no automaticity -- it will depend on prevailing political and other circumstances. This was known a week ago and the US Administration's letter has added nothing to our understanding.

Yet, the American politician tried to interpret the letter textually, obliterating the language pushed in to create the space for manoeuvre. His intent was to get the sceptics at the NSG to take a hard line, based on his maximalist interpretation of the American explanation of the 123 Agreement. No friend of India, Mr Berman was trying to murder the deal.

Second, every international agreement necessitates a quantum of risk-taking. India did not join the World Trade Organisation demanding lifetime guarantees of an annual balance of trade surplus. It cannot insist the world must sell it nuclear equipment and continue to sell it fuel 'unconditionally' and irrespective of what it does.

From Plassey to Tarapur, Indians have a persecution complex about 'foreign betrayal'. Over the years, these shibboleths have become self-perpetuating truths and are cited outside of any context. Consider Tarapur, the nuclear plant and the cause that has created this obsession with 'lifetime guarantees' and 'uranium stockpiles'.

When India bought the Tarapur nuclear plant from the US, the agreement stated that only American fuel could be used for it. Then India tested a nuclear device in 1974 -- a legitimate action. The US stopped supplying uranium -- under its national laws, an equally legitimate action.

India pointed out that if the US walked away, India too could retain and reprocess the spent fuel and use the resultant plutonium as it wished, notwithstanding the safeguards agreement. The US got the message and facilitated French supplies to Tarapur. It is a story few remember, simply because it makes the rhetoric of 'perfidy' less dramatic. It establishes that within the international system there is ample scope for playing hardball, for give and take, not all of which can be put down in print right at the beginning.

How does one prevent another Tarapur? To insist on the right to a strategic reserve and a stockpile is meaningless. If there is enough uranium in the global market and if India has enough money and storage facilities -- and if it isn't worried about pushing up prices by trying to corner the world's supply -- there is theoretically no limit to the size of the stockpile.

Yet, is this really necessary? Wouldn't it be easier to insert a clause into every reactor purchase agreement, retaining the right to source fuel from any country, irrespective of the reactor's place of manufacture?

Third, the ultimate American trap, it is said, is in the revised draft presented to the NSG. In case India tests, the entire group will cease nuclear supplies to India "in accordance with paragraph 16 of the NSG guidelines". In short, India will be isolated, the innocent victim of a Washington-led, planet-wide plot aimed solely at manacling this great and wise country.

Consider, however, that even in this extreme situation all 45 countries of the NSG will have to meet and agree unanimously to punish India. Is Indian diplomacy and leverage so sub-standard as to not ensure one vote, one friend, one ally, in a group of 45? The principle of single-country veto, which so troubled India at successive NSG meetings in Vienna this month, will then be on New Delhi's side. Is it so incapable of playing off one nation against another?

If you believe the answer is 'yes', why even pretend India has great power ambitions? Meanwhile, the rest of us wait for the Viennese waltz to end.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, September 06, 2008