123 Agreement and the faces of Indian polity – Part II



I think I covered the 123 Agreement fairly briefly in the last piece of essay. In this piece, I will deal with the reactions and oppositions and their validity.

There are oppositions to this agreement from three corners, from the scientists in India, BJP and chiefly, the left.

Let’s deal with the nuclear scientists’ concerns. Many of their concerns seem valid and need to be addressed. One is especially about separating civil and nuclear capabilities.

People who talk about the 123 agreement mention two phrases, civil-nuclear capabilities and missile-nuclear capabilities. Though self-explanatory, this means India will have a few nuclear locations where they will produce nuclear material to meet India’s growing power needs and at some other locations, the material will be used to – well – make nuclear bombs.

Now, this is not as easy as it sounds in the previous paragraph. As of now, scientists say that not much of distinction exists between these two and the transaction across the facilities is common. The government should make a very sincere and meticulous effort in separating these facilities without having to compromise our strategic research.

Another concern is about the nature of surveillance by IAEA. As understood from various literatures, IAEA is a very busy organisation with severe manpower shortage. They have not been carrying out their audits appropriately and many audits in US and France were conducted after the respective countries ‘insisted’ on it and after they ‘paid’ for it.

Personally, after the initial round of surveillance, I don’t see much problem in the audits and we have something to worry only if we actually re-route the imported nuclear fuel towards weapon making. That would be unscrupulous and if we are caught, it serves us right.

Third is about the amount of weapons that we would be able to make with the available low-grade uranium especially after the number of strategic research facilities being restricted due to the agreement. This is a concern but as I see it, our situation is not any better even if this agreement does not go through.

Having said this, most of the scientists are happy about this agreement and though they have expressed certain concerns they are merely to caution the government for taking adequate measures rather than ruling out the agreement in its entirety.

Moving on to the BJP’s stand on, I find this the most absurd one. The initiative for agreement started only during BJP’s rule and both Jaswanth Singh and Vajpayee actively worked to get this through. If their government had continued, they would have done exactly the same as what Congress is doing now. So, the current stand is nothing but playing cheap opposition politics and is not based on any strategic concerns. This is best left ignored.

Now, the third and the loudest voice come from the Left. As the readers of this blog know my stand on Left very well, I find their opposition preposterous if not surprising.

We will take on some of their points: The official statement released by all the Communist parties of India on 7th August 2007, contains certain key words. That statement says that this agreement is a devise of the US to ‘entangle India into a complex web’ of US’s political relationship using which US will make ‘inevitable demand that’ we buy more weapons from them. The statement even warns of USs ‘quest to make’ India its reliable ally in Asia.

First off, the fact that the US has considered India as an ‘ally’ to pursue in Asia is good for us. It is a known fact that US badly needs active support from India on various political aspects especially to contain China’s growing influence in this region. The fact that we are not playing an active role as a leader in this region is, in my opinion, inappropriate. Personally I don’t think what were stated above are the reasons why US wants to pursue this agreement but I don’t see anything wrong in those intentions for both India and the US.

Next point talks about the need for India to align its foreign policy along the lines of American interests. The statement quotes the example where America persuaded us to work against Iran’s nuclear initiatives. Left warns us that, if we were to go against US on certain foreign policies, then the agreement will be called off.

I don’t think this would be case. For one thing: whether we go with this agreement or not, US is going to continue to pressurise us on certain world affairs. Remember that due to US pressure, India voted against Iran long back even though we were not signatories of this agreement. However, we going by our own self-interests on devising our foreign policies should not matter to US, is what I believe. India was the only country to condemn Iraq war in the parliament. Even countries like France and Russia who were vehemently opposed to the war have not done so. Several of US’s allies have gone against the US’s foreign interests in the past without any consequences.

The third point in the statement seems to be the most laughable of all. In this, Left talk about the ban on further nuclear tests. I think I ought to quote the statement as is:

‘The Left parties have well known views against nuclear testing for weaponisation, but that does not mean acceptance of any US imposed curbs on India's sovereign right to exercise that choice.’

This seems quite confusing to me. If such were their emotions, they should be happy to know that we will not be testing nuke anymore. They should be thankful to the US for imposing it on us, is it not?

Left vehemently opposed Pokhran II and even called it a shame. You would perhaps remember Lakshmi Sehgal, the Presidential candidate from Left, who was pitted against Kalam. In one of the interviews, she mentioned that ‘Having a nuclear scientist as the president would send a wrong signal to the world.’ Such was the emotion of the Left that they even opposed to the scientist who helped conduct these tests.

What kind of stand is it that says that ‘Though I don’t like it, I might do it just because you’re against it?’ Juvenile is the word that comes closest.

I have a simple yardstick with which I measure issues. If Left opposes it, it should be good and if they support it, it must be bad. Though there are exceptions, in this case, I strongly feel that the 123 Agreement, as they call it is good for the country and the only achievement of this government. I congratulate Manmohan Singh of this and I urge him to stick to his guns to call Left’s bluff.

Cho Ramaswamy, the political analyst from South India once remarked this about these communist parties: Communism, as a philosophy and way of life is dead. The rest of the world, including the erstwhile communist countries have understood this and moved on. In India though, these parties have taken the dead body of communism, made a mummy out of it and are continuing with their business.

He is right. And I think the mummified body is beginning to stink.

123 Agreement and the faces of Indian polity – Part I



I have been meaning to write about this for quite some time but never managed time. I said time because though I had the good understanding of the behaviour of Indian political community, I wanted to study a few essays by the experts in order understand the technicalities before I convince myself of what I believe.

Here’s a primer for those who are busier than me to scratch the surface.

In 1968, US, USSR, France, UK and China drew up an agreement called NPT, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. This was intended to prevent nuclear tests and development of nuclear armaments in the world. At this time, all these five countries had nuclear capabilities and the idea was seen as mainly to prevent the rest of the world from acquiring nuclear weapons. India refused to sign this treaty and contended that NPT aims to divide the world into two, Nuclear haves and have nots. As expected, Pakistan refused to sign this, citing India’s stand.

More importantly, around the same time, India began its research on indigenous nuclear capabilities. It would be interesting to note that India built its first research reactor Apsara, on its own in 1956. Following this, Bhabha outlined three-stage nuclear power programme in 1958. And the famous Pokhran I took place on 18th May 1974. This angered the West and US slapped a lot of economic embargo on India’s nuclear research that included civil nuclear capabilities as well.

Now coming to the actual issue, what are India’s problems that force us into needing this agreement?

First off, we need energy to sustain our growing economy. We can’t depend too much on the middle-east to supply fossil fuel for two reasons: 1) they are getting costlier 2) that region is constantly volatile. Also, we don’t have quality coal available freely in India anymore. Some are hidden underneath our rainforests and we will have to destroy a bit of our ecology to plough them out. We have very minimal uranium. We need nuclear fuel badly.

We don’t need much of nuclear technology. In the last 40 years, we have been zealously developing this technology all by our own, though the advanced technology that this agreement is going to bring will help.

To win some, we have to lose some. What are we losing in this bargain?

We have to agree not to develop nuclear weapons using the fuel and the technology that the US is going to provide us. In order to do this, we have to identify a set of reactors that will use the fuel and the techie stuff coming from them. And understandably, there will be audits to ensure that we are not ‘sneaking’ out any stuff outside to the other reactors used for military purposes. These audits will be carried out by IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agency. India has identified 14 out of 22 reactors as ‘civilian’ and hence these will come under the IAEA surveillance.

We will also have to work with US in terms of combating other countries that are aspiring for nuclear weapons, namely Iran. It is worth noting that in the recent past, India has voted against Iran’s nuclear initiatives.

The third most important aspect is about our right to conduct further tests. As far as I have studied the literature, it is quite ambiguous. Interestingly, India has voluntarily capped a moratorium on further tests but we still have the right to test a nuke or two in case the situation demands. Going back a couple of decades, all the signatories of NPT have conducted tests after the agreement. Considering the prevailing situation, India will not want to conduct another test, unless or otherwise it sees a threat.

What are the flipsides to not signing up this treaty? India’s nuclear technology, though was completely developed on our own, has been quite slow. We do have the capacity to advance our technology but that would take several decades. Also, we don’t have the nuclear fuel. We have very low grade uranium and we are spending five times the international rates to extract. Our energy shortage is legendary and we can't wait.

The additional and significant benefit that we gain by signing is that we are no longer isolated in the nuclear world. Though we are not part of NPT, with this agreement, we become recognised as Nuclear Weapon’s State and that’s a special privilege. This also marks as a landmark event with our relationship with the US. Bush has categorically ruled out any such treaty with Pakistan so even though India was not a US’s ally in the past, we gain an upper hand and this will boost our economic ties immensely.

What are the opponents of this agreement are saying and why they are protesting it? We'll discuss those in the next part.