India's Congress party backs off
nuclear pact By Siddharth
Srivastava
NEW DELHI - India's
Congress-led federal government has blinked on the
Indo-US nuclear deal.
The left-wing
coalition partners, who are opposed to the pact
and threatened to withdraw support, have had their
way and without their support in Parliament the
government would have collapsed.
The
Indo-US nuclear deal seeks to allow India access
to civilian nuclear power technology without
having to adhere to the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Given the unpredictable way that matters
have evolved over the nuclear issue over the past,
it is still possible that the government may yet
make a last ditch charge to seal the deal at
international forums such as the International
Atomic Energy Agency or the Nuclear Suppliers
Group. But such a possibility looks very remote.
Last week Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
and the powerful Congress president Sonia Gandhi
assured the nation that the government will last
until 2009 and ruled out the possibility of early
elections.
Singh, who has been the most
vehement supporter of the nuclear deal, said his
government is not just about one nuclear issue and
that politics is about surviving the short-term
battles to achieve long-term goals.
Gandhi
said that the government would last its term and
will not push the nation into a political crisis
over the nuclear stand-off, given other challenges
such as confronting India's enormous poverty
problem.
There is no doubt though that a
lot of thought has gone into the latest Congress
maneuver not to push for the deal.
Firstly, responsibility for the failure of
the nuclear pact has been shifted onto the
left-wing parties who have criticized it primarily
with empty anti-US rhetoric.
Their views
however are not shared by many of India's middle
class and intellectuals, who feel that access to
civilian nuclear technology would benefit the
country and that India has sufficient resilience
to stand up to any superpower to protect its
national interests.
As a matter of fact,
it is economic and military rivals China and
Pakistan who would be the happiest that the deal
did not go through, and there is a faint
possibility that India's leftwingers will now stop
flashing their victory grins and adopt a softer
line on the issue, allowing the pact to go through
with cosmetic changes.
Secondly, the
Congress party did not want to fall into the trap
that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) created for
itself during the previous elections by going
overboard on its "India Shining" campaign, which
referred to the economic optimism in India after
plentiful rains in 2003 and the success of the
Indian IT boom. The slogan was popularized by the
then-ruling BJP for the 2004 Indian general
elections - which the BJP lost.
Gandhi's
focused game plan has been to project herself, the
party and the government as a bridge that seeks to
help the aam aadmi (common man), her
favorite words in political discourse, cross over
from poverty.
Thirdly, there is the fear
of a Muslim backlash against the Congress due to
its pro-US stance. While it is generally felt that
trade relations and foreign policy do not impact
India's domestic politics, sacrificing the
government on a deal that involves the US can have
severe repercussions.
Pan-Islamic
sentiments can no longer be discounted in India,
given Washington's invasion of Iraq and problems
with Iran.
Fourthly, beyond its public
image, the Congress has calculated that even
realpolitik does not dictate the calling of
elections at this time. Had the Congress chosen to
do so, there is no guarantee of the results and
the Congress brains trust seems to have rightly
concluded that there is no way that the party
would win a majority of seats on its own.
Even if the left parties returned with
fewer seats in Parliament, which looks to be the
most likely outcome, they would still be a factor
in any non-BJP government formation.
Then
there is the emerging regional satrap, Mayawati
Kumari, the leader of India's low-caste Bahujan
Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh state, who could be
even more difficult to handle, with her own prime
ministerial aspirations.
The Congress
today also relies on the support of regional
parties from Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Bihar,
but there is no assurance that they would win back
the seats.
Indeed, in such as scenario,
the Congress seems to have decided that it is best
to deal with the "known devil" left parties than
create a new free-for-all wherein anybody,
including the BJP or a left-supported "third
front", could take a shot at government formation.
It has happened in the past, in the mid-1990s,
as former prime ministers I K Gujral, Deve Gowda
and the late Chandra Shekar could have testified.
All had the post foisted on them due to desperate
political wranglings, and the situation today is
no different.
Now the two national
parties, Congress and the BJP, are learning that
difficult coalition partners with regional agendas
are the new order of the day, and they will need
to find ways to cajole - not force - new allies.
Such a process has its advantages, as the
minor voices need to be heard. But the drawback is
that what was once seen as a win-win nuclear deal
for India now looks to be lost.
Siddharth Srivastava is a New
Delhi-based journalist.
(Copyright
2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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