Honest Arguments about the Nucelar Deal

I am not sure about the nuclear deal. Well, as per most polls, more than 70% Indians are giving me company. I am BJP's middle class vote-bank and I not ditching them anytime soon (not after I stuck with them even through Gujarat riots).

While there are substantial reasons for my ambivalence, one is sheer loyalty - not to BJP but to Arun Shourie. Arun Shourie, for me, is the leading conservative thinker in India, and one with unquetionable integrity (when was the last time a Ministry was involved in deals worth billions of dollars, and even opposition acknowledged that Minister is clean?). He differs with BJP's public stand on reservations and I agree with him; he differs with BJP's public stand on Ambedkar and I agree with him. So I agree with him more than I agree with BJP. In the case of nuclear deal I was willing to listen to BJP, because he has articulated BJP's line of thought (though Yashwant Sinha's active advocacy of the same line pushes me the other way) - unfortunate but when I don't understand a issue much, I look at the people on either side!

So much for my ambivalence, but I want this deal to happen. I wish those in favour of the deal had more honest arguments. For me an honest argument in favour of the deal is 'Yes, US will not act against their own law - the Hyde Act; while as a sovereign nation we can conduct a nuclear test, all that is gained through this deal will go down the drains if we do so; yes, the agreement does not consider us a Nuclear Weapons State' BUT ' deal or no-deal, we will have to suffer isolation if we conduct a nuclear test; deal or no deal, there is no international agreement now or possible in near future which will acknowledge us to be a nuclear weapons state; and while USA views the 123 Agreement in the light of Hyde Act, we are not bound by it and we will act accordingly, and have accounted for US acting according to Hyde Act'. In a nutshell, this is the best we could have got, and tell us if NDA could have done better? Tell us if these benefits are not worth the costs?

Nick Burns, one of the key architects of the deal, has spoken about many of these issues and he almost endorses every objection that NDA has to the deal . It is difficult for the government, even through legal luminaries like Manu Singhvi, to argue that opposition's objections are against national interest because the person who negotiated the deal on US' behalf has publicly stated that "When this agreement was negotiated, it was fully consistent with the provisions of the Hyde Act. So we have the right to terminate it if India tests." He further adds that," "No aspect of this deal recognises India as a nuclear weapons state." What would the Government have to say about it?

In this context I would reiterate the need for a more honest argument in favour of the deal, which while acknowledging all that Nick Burns says (the 'Cost'), talks about the 'benefits. Currently the government is busy denying that there are any costs - a debate that they are not going to win other than in the Indian Express editorials.

RBI is a communal and anti-poor organisation!

While most news channels spent a lot of time talking about hike in CRR and repo rates, they ignored an equally important part of RBI announcement. As per RBI, "Early fiscal indicators point to some strains on the Centre's fiscal position which has worsened somewhat in relation to Budget estimates.” It further noted that in view of the growing off-budget liabilities and enhanced expenditures on subsidies, loan waivers and salaries in the rest of the year, fiscal deficit may go up. Consequently, fiscal developments warranted “close and careful monitoring” as it would have implications on inflation and external sector management, the report said.

Now when the Finance Minister announced this 60,000 Crore loan waiver in his budget speech without really budgeting for it, opposition parties were critical of this fudging. Arun Shourie in his piece in The Indian Express, quoted Manmohan Singh's 1991 speech about VP Singh Government's loan waiver, "There is one large component of non-plan expenditure that is a burden on the exchequer... I refer to the Government’s obligation under the Rural Debt Relief Scheme. Unfortunately, there was a gross under-estimation of the total fiscal liability under this scheme which was introduced last year. In addition to the sum of Rs. 1500 crores provided in the revised estimates for last year, we have to provide Rs. 1500 crores in the current year. But this is not all. We may need a similar provision in the next year". Now the Congress government was doing the same thing.

Chidambaram rather than assuring the nation and the parliament about where the money will come from, was stating that 'Trust me' - Shourie called it 'Main Hoon Na' budgeting. Congress spokesmen in debates in TV studios went on offensive proclaiming Congress to be the party of poor and BJP anti-poor, and some debates digressed into routine rants about the 'communal' BJP. No one ever told where would the money come from, and what would be the impact on the economy.

Now that RBI's assessment echoes the same things that the opposition had said about the FM's sleight of hand in budgeting, what would the Congress spokesmen say in a TV debate? 'Communal' and anti-poor' RBI?

Samajwadi Party's Parliamentary Commerce

There is enough evidence in 'cash-for-vote' scandal to implicate a Samajwadi Party MP in the Rajya Sabha and another in the Lok Sabha. But Samajwadi Party's shameless commercial dealings had started before the trust vote and have continued even after that. CBI's 'go slow' on Mulayam investigations and 'move fast' on Mayawati's investigations is well documented. But the biggest shock was Samajwadi Party's political resolution on Monday, 28th July.

"There are certain provisions in the Hyde Act passed by the US Congress which will create hindrance in going ahead with the nuclear deal. We request the Centre to press the USfor making certain amendments in the Hyde Act before finalising the deal or present a bill in Parliament to make an Act in India also" said the resolution.

Is this not a verbatim endorsement of BJP and NDA's stand on the deal. NDA has supported the strategic partnership with the USA and a Civil Nuclear Cooperation as well, but has expressed concerns about clauses of Hyde Act. Since it was more realistic about chances of US ammeding the Hyde Act (even SP is just playing to the gallery here), they suggested a possible act or ammendment to curent Atomic Energy Act in India to negate the impact of Hyde Act.

Samajwadi Party and, backed by its support, Congress has called NDA all sorts of names. 'Lack of confidence in India's standing', 'frivolous objections to create a roadblock in India's energy security' and many such! Now would Congress say exactly the same charges against Samajwadi Party for having made the same objection and suggested the same remedy? As it turns out it was all about Manmohan Singh saving his chair by winning the trust vote and not about an honest debate on the Nuclear deal - an subject on which, as it turns out, Congress' most numerous and vocal supporters are speaking BJP's language Ctrl+C & Ctrl+v

With the benefit of hindsight, should we not hail Advani’s ‘Judgement’?

If Advani had Barack Obama’s marketing machinery at his disposal, he should have used it to tell the country, specially in the light of the recent blasts, how his judgment was superior to everyone else’s. Obama key election plank has been ‘judgement’ that he demonstrated by giving a speech against Iraq war when even most Democrats were for the war – John Kerry and Hillary Clinton included – how he has been proven right.

Mulayam Singh in July,2006, “There have been two major terrorist strikes in Uttar Pradesh ever since we formed the government; and be it Ayodhya or the Varanasi blasts, SIMI was not remotely involved”. His brother went further in defending SIMI saying that even he had been accused of being a SIMI agent! Governor of UP, TV Rajeswar Rao, took a serious note of this statement. Had he been from BJP he would have been branded communal but he happens to be a UPA appointed Governor, who was senior intelligence official who ought to know more about security threats to the country than Mulayam.

Defending a terrorist organization is a criminal offence in many countries in the world. It is so in many states in India. What would you say about a person who has gone on defending a terrorist organization just to garner votes? While Mulayam Singh tried to backtrack, but that would have been possible only if this was his one-off defense of SIMI. But he has been a pro-SIMI activist for a long a time. Milli Gazzette dated Oct. 15, 2001 writes, ‘Other organizations including Jamiatul Ulama, Milli Council and Majlis-e-Mushawarat have also criticized the move. Mulayam Singh Yadav of Samajwadi Party has come forward and criticized the ban on SIMI.’ It further adds, ‘Samajwadi Party’s general secretary and Rajya Sabha MP Azam Khan told MG that the move smacks of political vendetta against the Muslims of the country.’

Secular UPA’s, Minister of State for Home Affairs Sriprakash Jaiswal had this to say in the Lok Sabha in April 2008, “The banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) has links with terrorist groups, including Lashker-e-Toiba”. ’ He further added that links have been revealed in investigations into a number of cases.

When SIMI was banned by the NDA government in 2001, Advani and the BJP drew flak from all and sundry. Today with arrest of top SIMI leadership, it nefarious designs have been exposed. Primary investigations into recent blats show that Indian Mujahideen which has claimed responsibility for the Ahmadabad blasts on July 26th, could be SIMI v2.0. It is too much to expect the UPA and its supporting leaders to acknowledge that Advani was right and they were wrong; but at least they would not be so shameless to side with a blatantly anti-national terrorist organization. That they are still in politics is unfortunate and can happen only in India where we forgave those who supported China in the Indo-China war of 1962!

Post Script: If I have desired politics being purged of anti-national, pro-terrorist leaders like Mulayam Singh; let me also make another wish. The biggest achievement of the trust vote on April 22nd was that UPA brilliantly leveraged leaders like Omar Abdullah to demonstrate that what is pro-India cannot be anti-Indian Muslim, and that problems that afflict Muslims of India are the problem that afflict all Indians. This ensured that in spite of earlier attempts the Nuclear Agreement never became a communal issue. The welcome that Omar received even in the Kashmir valley proves that it is an insult to the Muslim voters that being pro-SIMI, exonerating Afzal Guru, siding with Iran come what may, would get their votes. I wish people like Omar (who I think hid behind rhetoric on the land transfer issue, but that was a minor point of his speech) and others like him would do the same in delinking a ruthless anti-terrorist operation from an anti-Muslim operation. It will strengthen those who want to deal with it strongly and weaken those who are playing on those fears. For once even BJP would be grateful to Omar.

How Right is Obama…about BJP in UP

"..I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government…..And they fell through the BJP (Clinton) administration, and the Mulayam Singh (Bush) administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to caste (guns) or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-Brahmin (anti-immigrant) sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

This is from Barrack Obama’s speech at a fund-raiser in San Fancisco. The words in parentheses are the original words of Obama which I have replaced with words that reflect the reality of UP. In the 36 years since 1972, Democratic party has been in power (President’s post) for only 12 years. It is lucky that there is a two party system in the US, and with the Iraq war and looming recession it may win the November election. There won’t be any such luck for BJP (or for that matter Congress) in UP, which is far the largest state of Indian union (no other state has even 50 Lok Sabha seats compared to the 80 from UP). And Obama’s statement above explains much of the reason for BJP’s plight in UP. Being more right of center than left, I am more worried about BJP’s fortunes than Congress, so the BJP perspective here.

Many in BJP presumably feel, after being stung by 2004 defeat, that ‘governance’ or ‘development’ does not make good policy and hence activist Hinduism (and I use it here to mean all the negatives of this movement which has many positives as well – but that’s a topic for another blogpost) is important to create a core votebank. This is where BJP needs to look at UP and listen to Obama. All this ‘core votebank’ has slipped away in UP to the extent that only one of the 5 party candidates who saved his deposit in recent bypolls is a history-sheeter who defected on the eve of the election. The Hindu votebank did not exist as it has not existed in most elections in UP during this decade.

People vote based on caste or religion when they lose faith in Government – this becomes identity politics. BJP benefited by the affirmation of religious identity in 1990s is now being hurt by the reaffirmation of caste identity. The people cannot be blamed when they did not see the neighboring primary school get teachers or District hospital provide the promised free healthcare or new jobs created. So development becomes a non-issue. As does corruption, when BJP politicians are also not seen to be any different.

So what can BJP do then to make development an issue? First get its Obama in UP. A person with charisma to make people believe that there is ‘hope’ for their fortunes to ‘change’ – it isn’t for no reason that his campaign has been called a campaign in poetry rather than prose. Before you say ‘but this isn’t America’, let me remind you that VP Singh made people ‘hope’ that there will ‘change’ in corruption in government, at a time when all of us had accepted corruption to be integral to the system. So it can happen – it requires a mascot (Obama) to carry the message (Hope and Change).

Second, to fight skepticism and create a platform for this mascot to work from, they need to leverage their peer-less grassroots cadre to provide glimpses of what is possible. Fight for the teacher appointed to the primary school to come to the school – village level workers can do it. Attempt something similar with Primary Health Centers. Once on a visit with my son to a private Clinic of a Government pediatrician in my hometown of Sultanpur, I found that most people whose daily wage would by no means be more than Rs. 50 were paying that amount to the doctor for consultation. Is that a very difficult situation for a grassroots organization to redress by creating some kind of vigilance mechanism at hospitals? Ensure that mid-day meals are provided to all children – here the starting point is zero, so anything will be an improvement - Ananth Kumar and his wife’s work in Bangalore is an amazing success story for other BJP district units to learn from (about mid-day meals as public service and way to connect with people).

To some it may sound Utopian, but achieving 5-10% success in two or three such initiatives may not be impossible. In any case it is a more achievable Utopia than BJP winning next elections in UP by working out caste combinations right in the state. A party in as hopeless a state as BJP in UP can only attempt something so unlikely. Barack Obama, ‘the black guy with a name rhyming with Osama’ had no chance of competing with the Clintons had he not campaigned for ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’. He may not even realize that only hope for a right-wing party in a BIMARU state in India, is to emulate him!