Government Wins Manmohan Singh Loses

The UPA government has won the motion of confidence sought by India’s Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh. The way is now clear for the government to officially approach the Board of Governors of the IAEA to approve the agreement reached between the Government of India and the IAEA officials. Even if the US Congress is unable to give its final clearance to the deal before the end of the term of the Bush administration, it would be an almost done deal as far as India is concerned, if the Board of Governors endorses the draft agreement and the deal is also endorsed by the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

There has never been a foreign policy issue which has divided India as much as the Indo-US nuclear deal. There are no two opinions about India’s growing appetite for energy. Anyone who has visited any of India’s metropolitan cities is aware of the frequent power interruptions and blackouts. Not only commercial establishments, almost every middle class household has to have an electricity Inverter or a Generator as a stand-by to provide electricity when the city supply is cut off. Factories have to generate their own electricity, which adds to their cost of production. Diesel Generators of electricity are a major source of pollution in Delhi and other cities. Moreover, India’s power shortage is so huge that it is not a question of choosing between nuclear and other sources of power, such as hydro and thermal plants, or the import of natural gas. It needs them all.

However, serious questions have been raised about the price India is paying to seek access to nuclear fuel and new technology. It is not the intent of this article to go through the pros and cons of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Strong and powerful arguments have been made on both sides: The proponents of the deal would have us believe that this is a win-win deal for India in which it is getting a virtual Nuclear-Weapons State status and which will open the door to it becoming a major world power. The opponents warn that the deal does not give India any special status but, instead, has jeopardized the future security of the country as it imposes a virtual ban on any nuclear weapons testing by India while its adversaries, especially China, face no such restriction. The greatest objection, however, is that the deal, especially the Hyde Amendment attached to the Agreement by the US Congress, makes India lose its independence in foreign policy initiatives and makes it subservient to the strategic interests of the United States.

Manmohan Singh made the Indo-US nuclear deal the centerpiece of his UPA government and staked his personal reputation on carrying it through. He certainly believes that this deal is critical to meeting India’s energy needs and to cement her strategic relationship with the United States of America which, he believes is also important for the rapid growth of the Indian economy. In that sense, the win is a personal victory for him. However, to win this confidence, Dr. Singh has lost the most precious asset he had, his personal integrity.

Dr. Manmohan Singh came to the government from academia. He was a Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics from where he went on to become a bureaucrat and the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. When India’s Prime Minister Narsimha Rao faced an economic catastrophe in 1991 as a cumulative result of the socialist policies of the previous four decades, he brought in Dr. Singh as his Finance Minister to spearhead economic liberalization to undo the effects of the previous policies. The Reforms that he initiated, and have been continued since then by all Indian governments, are largely credited with India’s impressive economic turnaround in recent years.

Since 1992, when he joined the political process, Dr. Singh has earned an enviable reputation for political integrity and honesty. Examples of his honesty and simplicity, such as bringing his lunch from home, are legendary. His unique arrangement with Sonia Gandhi also enabled him to retain his reputation of being above politics as Mrs. Gandhi took care of the political dealings both within the Congress Party and with its coalition partners.

All this changed with the way that Dr. Singh has handled the Indo-US nuclear deal. He broke his understanding with his Left partners by approaching the IAEA for an approval of the deal before reaching a consensus with his political allies. The Left Parties withdrew their support from the government, as they had promised. What followed have been the ugliest scenes of political horse-trading ever seen in India at the Central level. The Congress made a deal with the Samajwadi Party, with 39 members of parliament, to fill the void created by the withdrawal of the support to the government by the Left Parties. There have been reports of payments of as much as Rs. 25 Crores for securing the support of one MP. Dr. Manmohan Singh rushed to Lukhnow to rename that city’s airport in the hope of obtaining the support of a minor regional party. Criminal cases were dropped against some politicians and renewed against some other politicians in a cynical use of the CBI for political process. Special orders were issued to release convicted murderers from prisons so that they could vote for the government.

All these machinations have paid off for the government. The government has won the day and the opposition has lost. But so has Dr, Manmohan Singh. The cleanest politician of India since independence is Clean no more.