Cheer up, comrades! It’ll be back to pre-1990 abyss soon!
Natteri Adigal
22 February 2008, Friday
merinews.com
SENATOR JOSEPH Biden, who heads the influential Senate Foreign Relations Committee of the US Congress, is known for not mincing his words. Stopping over at New Delhi briefly this week, after observing the election progress in Pakistan, he declared, “If it (firm commitment by India to abide by the terms of Hyde Act on Indo-US civilian nuclear cooperation) is not done by the end of July, the deal does not go through.”
Biden elaborated, “July is the end . . . it has to reach the US Congress before June. If it is not ratified by the US Congress by then, the deal will be re-negotiated by a Democrat President.” He made the implication of that quite clear, “It’s highly unlikely that the next President will be able to present the deal in its present form.” He stressed that the Democratic Party, which is widely expected to dethrone the Republican reign at the White House, has strong views relating to nuclear proliferation and arms control. Most Democrats see no need to assure flow of technology and investment to India for ensuring the capping and roll back of its nuclear weapons programme.
That would mean that the US would not want to treat India any different from Libya, North Korea or Iran and would force the country to fall in line with other countries. The policy of enforcing backbreaking sanctions will elicit just a whimper in Nuclear Suppliers’ Club (NSG), including from India’s ‘trusted friend’ Russia. Even the noted Soviet apologist Kanwal Sibal, former ambassador to Russia and foreign secretary, has conceded, “Nobody wants to challenge the US and nobody wants to undermine the Nuclear Suppliers Group guidelines. You can sign anything with others, but the actual implementation of those agreements will not see actual power plants coming to India unless Indo-US agreement is sealed.”
It is of note in this context that Russian Prime Minister Viktor A Zubkov and Indian PM Singh did not announced the signing of a deal to build additional nuclear reactors in India after the former’s recent visit to India. They only confirmed the deal’s ‘finalisation’, which was supposed to have been wrapped up ages ago.
There is no escape from the fact that India happens to be a pathetically energy-deficit country. If the current – somewhat decent – growth rate is to be sustained and if infrastructure initiatives in the pipeline are to translate into growth, the country will need power to the tune of 1370 GW by around 2050. The current generation is less than 10 per cent of that. In a six-day national training programme organised this month by the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS) on ‘Energy Security and Management’, atomic energy commission chief Anil Kakodkar sounded a warning: Unless thorium can be transformed into a viable fuel from the beach-sand it currently is, and unless technology is in place to make high-ash coal a clean energy source, there is grave trouble ahead. Newer technologies are badly needed in the field of coal and thorium to avert a throwback to ‘Hindu growth rate’ or even negative growth. There is no way the government can fund the colossal investment needed for developing the resources from domestic mobilisation.
Certain quarters in India heartily welcome such a prospect of throwback to the pre-reforms era. The so-called saviours of the proletariat would be delighted to have a field day again, protecting impoverished masses from exploitation by the ‘bourgeoisie’. The Communist parties and their fellow travellers smell a great opportunity to increase their clout by steeply expanding their constituency of impoverished masses.
D Raja, national secretary of Communist Party of India (CPI) is keen that the ‘largest functional democracy’ that is so friendly with the comrades should not ‘succumb’ to the Senators’ pressure tactics. He was understandably dismissive of Biden’s plain speak and quipped, “It is a pressure tactic by the US. Starting from Condoleeza Rice and Nicholas Burns to David Mulford, they have been talking on the same lines.” Completely hiding the fact that the nuke deal categorically prohibits all military applications of atomic energy, the worthy remarked, “It is also a desperate act as their military industrial complex looks at India as a big market. It is a big opportunity for American big business, which they do not want to lose!”
If Indian economy is pushed back into era of shortages of the type witnessed till the 1980s, it will pave the way for reestablishing the licence-permit-quota raj. That would mean that power brokers of the Nehru era could be back in business. With the objective of scuttling the deal, the anti-reforms lobby within the Congress Party has succeeded to manoeuvre a ‘joint mechanism’ with the Left parties on the Prime Minister. They too are eagerly awaiting a return to the pre-reforms era.
M Veerappa Moily, chairman of the media department of the party, echoed the sentiments of the power brokers and opined, “The deal will be on our terms and the question of anyone putting any deadline does not arise.” About the deadlock that is threatening the fruition of the two-year long initiative, he remarked, “These deadlocks are not new. We should not be much concerned.”
Indira Gandhi, who first invited the nuclear pariah status on the country with her 1974 misadventure, termed the leftists as anti-nationals after identifying them as “people who are against the development of India.” The country is now ruled by her daughter in law through a proxy PM who says he keeps on bowing to the Left’s demands to save the country from another general election.
As long as even ‘educated’ Indians remain gullible enough to buy such nonsensical arguments, there is no need for our ‘comrades’ to despair. The ideology that sustains them, Communism, will not lose its sheen in this country even as has disappeared in China and Russia, its original strongholds!
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