Put the deal to Parliamentary vote

Now that tempers have cooled over the Indo-US nuclear deal, consider: what precisely does India gain from the 123 Agreement? Replenishment of the country’s dwindling stock of nuclear fuel (uranium).

Without that replenishment, the government argues, India’s 15 nuclear reactors will soon have to shut down. With the 123 Agreement, satisfaction of India’s future nuclear power fuel needs through the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) are secure. This, the government says, is crucial to reducing India’s energy deficit.

That is misleading. What the government has not pointed out is that nuclear energy accounts for a miniscule 3 per cent (3,700 MW) of India’s total current power generation output (1,27,000 MW).

Even by 2020, nuclear power will constitute just 6 per cent of our total energy generation. Nuclear energy is not the answer to India’s power shortage.

I have read the text of the 123 Agreement closely. The agreement (and the Hyde Act under which it is governed till it is ratified by the US Congress), despite being bilateral, specifically constrains India’s future policy on a third country –– Iran. This will affect our flexibility over the proposed gas pipeline from Iran and Pakistan through to India. It will also make

India a biased party in favour of the US if Washington (or its proxy, Israel) decides to attack Iran and destroy Teheran’s incipient nuclear capability.

Despite several layers of reasonable justifications that the 123 Agreement mandates in the event of India testing a nuclear device, the US President of the day has under the agreement absolute power to recall the nuclear fuel supplied to India.

In return, the US need only offer financial “compensation” and ensure other countries replace it as a supplier. In practice, of course, these safeguards are worthless.

Monetary compensation will not make up for the loss in critical nuclear fuel supplies once India becomes dependent on them. Besides, no member of the NSG will replace US nuclear supplies after Washington recalls its own fuel because the NSG works on the basis of consensus.

So why has Prime Minister Manmohan Singh staked his own reputation and the UPA government’s future on the 123 Agreement? The answer: there is a paradigm shift in Indian strategic policy thinking.

The UPA government believes that further nuclear testing –– as at Pokhran in 1974 and 1998 –– is no longer required to keep India’s nuclear weaponisation programme alive.

Hence the current unilateral nuclear test moratorium. It also believes that in the event of an American-Israeli attack on Iran, it will be able to stay neutral, despite the wording of the Hyde Act and the 123 Agreement.

It could be grievously mistaken on both counts. India’s nuclear weapons stockpile is already only barely on par with Pakistan’s and far below China’s.

More testing in the future is necessary to keep India’s nuclear deterrent from deteriorating into a sham. On Iran, the Hyde Act and the 123 Agreement could force India to take Washington’s side in the event of military hostilities with Teheran and skewer any oil and gas pipeline plans with a country, which is currently the world’s second largest producer of oil after Saudi Arabia.

Though the 123 Agreement has the support of only a minority in the Lok Sabha (basically the Congress and its UPA allies) it needs just Cabinet approval to pass into law.

This is unprecedented in a parliamentary democracy. In the past, far less grave policy decisions of the UPA coalition government have got aborted due to majority parliamentary opposition. But the 123 Agreement will, astonishingly, not be put to parliamentary vote.

In stark contrast, the US President and his Cabinet cannot ratify the deal without majority approval of the US Congress. That fact alone should shame this government into putting the 123 Agreement to vote in Parliament as governments in democracies are honour-bound to do.

Email:minhazmerchant@business-leaders.com