Nuclear deal was ruse to subordinate India to the US

The stream of almost unending revelations that comes out everyday punctures the credibility of the Manmohan Singh government. It is difficult to recall any other period in contemporary political history where a government had come to face such a process of uninterrupted embarrassments. And it is in such a setting that four important states are going to elect their respective assemblies.

To start with, it was the series of scams. In each of these, the government tried to brush aside the specific facts on the floor of parliament. On the 2G spectrum issue, the government claimed that everything was in order and no wrongdoing had taken place. If at all, the government policy was correct and it was merely repeating what its NDA predecessor had done.

But alas! Subsequent events showed that such a defence was a tissue of lies. The CAG punctured it; the Supreme Court intervened to force the CBI to pursue the criminals behind the scam, such as A Raja. The ‘holier than thou’ attitude of the Congress and the government by taking cosmetic action against the perpetrators of the CWG and Adarsh housing scams have proved to be mere diversionary tactics - and, that too, too little, too late.

Not that the government did anything to help its own cause. The railway budget showed how the sanctity of the budgetary process and the principle of accountability to parliament can be bartered for deception and subterfuge. The Indian Railways, which is not simply a public transport network but a major instrument of connecting and uniting India, has become bankrupt. The general budget showed clearly which side of the bread the present UPA dispensation wants to butter.

Amidst the most prolonged bout of continuous rise in the prices of essential commodities, the expectation was that the government would take meaningful measures on inflation. But on food, fuel and fertiliser subsidies, the budget has proposed a reduction of Rs38,000 crore. It has also reduced allocation for agriculture and allied services, rural development and all such programmes that are supposed to benefit the aam admi. The tax proposals show the preference towards the khas admi at the cost of the aam admi.

Approximately, Rs11,500 crore of direct taxes are waived while an additional burden of around the same amount is imposed as indirect taxes. It will be a cliché to mention that indirect taxes burden everyone, including those outside the tax net, while direct taxes are paid only by those who are capable of shouldering that burden.

The trend of exempting corporates from taxes continues: Rs88,000 crore exempted this year. In the last three years, the cumulative waiver amounts to over Rs3 lakh crore.

But, perhaps, the more damning indictment was the account of the foreign policy drift. The WikiLeaks disclosures don’t bring out any new facts. Many of them had been raised earlier, even on the floor of parliament in the course of several debates on Indo-US relations and particularly on the Indo-US nuclear agreement.

By making tall claims of the urgent imperative of accessing additional nuclear energy resource as a life and death question for the nation, the first UPA government was just trying to hoodwink our people. That the civilian nuclear accord was merely a ruse to seal a strategic partnership and interlock a proud, independent nation into a subordinate relationship is established by these revelations.

No amount of protestation can absolve the government. The US government has admitted the cables are genuine. We, as a nation, are forced to bear the ignominy of a government compromising the autonomy of a country freed from colonial yoke through the sacrifice of thousands of our countrymen and women, and initiated as a modern, independent nation by the tallest stalwarts of our national movement.

Purchasing legislators to save the government to undermining independent diplomatic initiative and subordinating policy direction to suit US strategic interests in the name of ‘convergence’ on questions like Palestine would break the heart of the likes of Gandhi and Nehru for sure. Yet, the mandarins of this government talk of all these as if it is ‘business as usual’.

Finally, it is really amusing that the managers of the government claim that they will do well in the upcoming assembly elections and that will wash away their sins. It is the same perverse logic that the prime minister advanced in defending and justifying the sordid events on the occasion of the trust vote in 2008. No doubt, Narendra Modi will be the happiest person with this turn of events. He will have no further cross to bear for the Gujarat genocide by the same count.