Let's seal the deal

BLOOMINGTON: Amidst the hoopla surrounding Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to China another issue of vital significance to the long-term future of India’s foreign policy, the status of the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal, has been overshadowed.
After two and a half years of painful, protracted bilateral negotiations, careful attempts in the US to placate an intransigent non-proliferation lobby and fitful efforts to deal with the opportunistic hostility of the Left parties and the BJP in India, the deal appears to be stalling at the International Atomic Energy Agency.At the moment, questions surrounding the guarantee of fuel supplies under exigent circumstances seem to be the source of contention.
There is no gainsaying the skills of the Indian negotiators in Vienna. That said, one wonders if their political masters in New Delhi are sufficiently alert to the lateness of the hour. Even after the IAEA negotiations are successfully concluded, both India and the US will need to obtain the approval of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and then seek the final nod from the US Congress. Unfortunately, the requisite time necessary to leap across all these hurdles is becoming woefully short.
The American presidential electoral season is already well under way. As it gathers momentum it will be increasingly difficult for both White House and the Congress to tend to, address and complete this bilateral accord. Once that happens, it will be inevitably postponed until the advent of a new administration and also become subject to the vagaries of electoral politics in India.
Life, as Manmohan Singh has stated, will no doubt go on. India, as most political observers know, has weathered many a political storm and has still managed to steer ahead. However, the likely costs to India, if this deal is not consummated before the Bush administration leaves office, is inestimable.
For the first time in its independent history, the country is at the cusp of a diplomatic and economic surge. During the past decade and half it has dispensed with much of its overheated political rhetoric, its empty moral posturing and adopted a nimble and pragmatic foreign policy. Simultaneously, thanks to the post-1991 economic reforms, it has also enjoyed the substantial benefits of robust economic growth. The two transformations, in tandem, have given the country a clout that it had long sought, but never hitherto obtained, in global affairs.
Much of this hard-won status will be directly undermined if the Indo-US civilian nuclear deal is allowed to fall by the wayside. Sadly, the full implications of the likely impact of such a failure on India’s emerging global profile are ill understood in New Delhi. There is little question that the collapse of this agreement will have a chilling effect on the burgeoning Indo-US diplomatic and strategic relationship.
It will also inevitably stall India’s long-term quest to obtain a range of dual-use technology from the US since a raft of legislation that prohibits such sales will remain in place. Also, all the benefits that this agreement would have brought to India’s ailing nuclear power industry will be jeopardised. These considerations alone would merit moving with alacrity towards the completion of the agreement.
Unfortunately, much more is at stake. What is really at issue is India’s international image as an effective, organised and able state, which can forge and implement a significant bilateral covenant. For far too long, thanks to flawed policies, a slothful bureaucracy and cumbersome procedures, India has been viewed as a state incapable of making and putting into effect decisions on pressing investment choices. Only recently, thanks to dramatic policy changes and the emergence of a new entrepreneurial spirit has it started to shed this well-deserved image.
The failure to pull off this deal within the remaining time horizon will send the most unwelcome message to the scions of Wall Street and beyond who had been lately eyeing India as an attractive investment destination. The prime minister, who can legitimately claim the distinction of putting this country on a secure path of economic growth, can ill-afford to overlook the likely consequences of failure.
(The writer is professor of political science at Indiana University.)