India: Wheeling and (nuclear)
dealing By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - Last week's easy approval of
the draft legislation needed to effect the Indo-US
nuclear deal by both the US House International
Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee was proceeded by an
unprecedented, extensive and, above all, expensive
lobbying effort by New Delhi.
The Indian
Embassy in Washington signed up two local lobbying
firms to sell the deal. This includes a US$700,000
contract with Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, an
outfit led by Robert Blackwill, former US
ambassador to India from 2001-03 and an advocate
of closer Indo-US ties. The embassy is also paying
$600,000 to the top US law firm Venable, with
former Democratic senator Birch Bayh of Indiana as
its point man. The Indian taxpayer picks up
the
tab totaling $1.3 million.
In what is
being seen as the biggest Indian push on Capitol
Hill, officials such as Foreign Secretary Shyam
Saran have been repeatedly dispatched to charm and
persuade congressmen. Saran has had meetings with
the big names of the Senate and House committees,
including Senators Richard Lugar and Joseph Biden,
and Congressman Henry Hyde and Tom Lantos.
These efforts are complemented by the
US-India Business Council (USIBC), which has
engaged the politically well-connected Patton
Boggs law firm to lobby lawmakers. Boggs is one of
the most expensive lobbying firms in Washington,
with a billing rate of $495 an hour. While
announcing the hiring of Patton Boggs, the USIBC,
which has nearly 100 Fortune 500 companies among
its members, said, "We strongly feel that the fate
of the strategic partnership between the United
States and India is key to our business
interests."
Although Washington has been
insisting that the nuclear deal involves more than
mere commerce, the business potential cannot be
ignored. Sales of civilian nuclear technology and
equipment to India could open up $100 billion in
energy business ventures for US companies, says
Dan Christman, the US Chamber of Commerce's
(USCC's) senior vice president for international
affairs.
One of most persistent and subtle
efforts to cajole Congress on Indian policy
matters has been the Confederation of Indian
Industry (CII), which represents some of India's
most profitable and biggest companies. The report
said the CII has spent more than $1 million over
the past six years on "fact-finding" trips and
lobbying efforts.
According to a review of
congressional disclosure records conducted by the
Center for Public Integrity, a non-profit research
organization in Washington, the CII was among the
top international organizations paying for
congressional travel between 2000 and 2005, even
though they were not registered to lobby during
this period. During this period, CII doled out
more than $540,000 in travel expenses for trips by
19 members of Congress, 11 spouses, and 58
congressional staffers.
In April 2005, the
CII registered to lobby for the first time, with
the first bill, $520,000, going to Barbour
Griffith & Rogers, whose brief was to
influence US government agencies, including
Congress, the White House, the State Department,
and the Department of Defense.
"It is
clear that business interests and US defense
contractors and former US officials involved in
South Asia policy have been working hard to push
this deal," Daryl Kimball, executive director of
the Arms Control Association, said to the
Indo-Asian News Service (IANS).
Gifts have
also been lavished on US officials, though in this
India has been exceeded by its traditional rival
Pakistan.
US companies too have mounted a
multimillion-dollar campaign to sell the energy
deal to the US Congress. It is being emphasized
that the deal promises a "bounty of opportunity".
The lobbying drive is the most expensive ever
mounted by business, USIBC president Ron Somers
said. What is more is that the US will benefit
despite not having built any new nuclear power
plants for more than 30 years.
Somers told
Reuters that a retired US Army lieutenant-general,
Daniel Christman, a former superintendent of the
US Military Academy at West Point, New York, now
working for the USCC, will coordinate a broad
effort as the Coalition for Partnership with India
that groups businesses, think-tanks and academics
supporting the deal.
And Raymond Vickery,
senior adviser to USIBC, said: "I believe that all
things being equal, we [US] will get a
considerable portion of the $20 billion to $40
billion in acquisitions that the Indians plan on
making by 2020."
Vickery has said
congressional approval of the deal would give
Lockheed Martin (the maker of F-16 fighter jets) a
reasonable chance to get a
$4-billion-to-$9-billion contract to supply 126
combat fighter planes to the Indian Air Force, a
contract that India would have been unlikely to
approve while sanctions were in place.
The
Boston Globe said, "For Indian entrepreneurs, it
is an opportunity to make money on privatized
nuclear power plants and buy high-tech equipment
that has been restricted for decades. For US
businesses, it is a chance to invest in India's
rapidly growing energy sector, to sell supplies to
Indian nuclear reactors, and - for the first time
- to have a shot at large-scale military
contracts."
Of course there are other
aspects of business that US has marked out for
India. There is a bid to double bilateral trade to
$40 billion in three years. The Pentagon expects
India to start purchasing as much as $5 billion
worth of conventional military equipment.
In keeping with the new-found bonhomie, in
April last year, US aerospace giant Boeing won a
$6.9 billion order for 50 aircraft from Air India,
India's public-sector airline. Boeing faced stiff
competition from France's Airbus, but a personal
intervention by President George W Bush sealed the
deal.
US firms are eyeing India's huge
retail market, which is valued at more than $200
billion, with several foreign players urging New
Delhi to open up the sector. Among those making an
aggressive pitch are the world's largest retailer,
Wal-Mart. Outsourcing from the US of course
remains the money-spinner for India. The bulk of
India's outsourcing business in the range of $20
billion to $25 billion in a year's time will be
from the US.
Siddharth
Srivastava is a New Delhi-based
journalist.
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