The Praful Bidwai Column
Pulling back from a misadventure
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is angry -- angry with his Congress party, his United Progressive Alliance partners, and with the Left parties whose support his government needs. He has repeatedly deplored their resistance to what he regards as a "historic" breakthrough: the controversy fraught US-Indian nuclear deal.
Dr. Singh gratuitously chided the Left parties in August, and challenged them to withdraw support. Then, he trained his guns on the UPA allies who oppose an early election, which would follow if the deal was rammed through.
Dr. Singh has, since, blown hot and cold. On October 12, he said that the deal's failure "will be a disappointment, but … not the end of life." On October 23, he stressed accelerated growth: "However, given … competitive politics and the very fractured mandate given to governments, it has become difficult … to do what is manifestly obvious."
Exactly a week later, he said that a delay in completing the deal didn't mean that it was "the end of the road."
However, what's "manifestly obvious" to Dr Singh isn't faintly visible to many. There's a sharp polarisation over the deal's content, context, and strategic and energy implications.
Dr. Singh's statements have further polarised opinion and encouraged the deal's more fervent backers to demand that he "call the Left's bluff," and enlist the Bharatiya Janata Party's support. If that means early elections, so be it!
Dr. Singh, today, faces extraordinarily high-powered pressure from US officials, including President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, and Ambassador David Mulford. Former secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, and former US ambassadors, Frank Wisner and Robert Blackwill, have also been lobbying the UPA. In addition, there's pressure from the US-India CEOs' forum and the "Fortune" global forum.
India has never before witnessed such concentrated, heavy-handed lobbying on any issue. For its part, the BJP taunts Dr. Singh about being the "weakest-ever" prime minister, and demands that he resign! Although their aims are entirely different, both camps want Dr. Singh to adopt a "principled" stance.
Both are comprehensively mistaken. Dr. Singh is simply not the kind of person who quits a position out of conviction. Here are three instances:
In Oct-Nov 1984, Dr Singh was the governor of the Reserve Bank. He was profoundly saddened by the anti-Sikh violence, organised by certain Congress leaders, following Indira Gandhi's assassination.
Dr. Singh told his friends that he would never have anything to do with the Congress or its governments. But, in January 1985, a Congress government promoted him to deputy chairman of the Planning Commission!
Between August 1987 and November 1990, Dr. Singh was secretary-general of the South Commission, established by former Tanzanian President Nyerere to promote equitable relations between the industrialised Global North and the developing Global South.
Dr Singh organised the Commission's acclaimed first report. This powerfully critiqued the "Washington Consensus"-style policies the World Bank and International Monetary Fund prescribe, and outlined alternatives to them.
Months later, Dr. Singh proceeded to advocate and implement those very policies with great ardour as finance minister!
In 1991, Dr. Singh was elected to the Rajya Sabha (Council of States) from Assam after declaring that he was normally resident there -- when he lived in Delhi. Many expected him to uphold honesty in public life by correcting this anomaly.
But all he did was change his claimed permanent residence from "c/o Hemaprabha Saikia" (wife of a former chief minister), to another address in Assam.
So, it's not realistic to expect Dr. Singh to resign over the nuclear deal. Rather, he's planning to impose either an early election on the UPA, or a dishonourable compromise with the BJP. Right-wing Congressmen are goading him towards elections, in which, they wishfully believe, the party might do better than in 2004.
Ranged against them is the Congress-UPA majority, including heavyweights like Mr Pranab Mukherjee, and leaders of the DMK, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Nationalist Congress.
They believe the UPA would be foolish to go into elections with the nuclear deal banner. It would probably fall short of a majority and become dependent on groupings like the Bahujan Samaj Party, which are more unpredictable than the Left. Therefore, they argue, the present arrangement should continue. The alternative could mean losing both the government and the deal.
After all, it's likely that many states in the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers' Group will oppose the deal because they know it doesn't enjoy strong domestic support.
Wrecking the government and precipitating elections would be a phenomenal misadventure for the Congress. It must desist from this, even if the BJP dilutes its stand under American pressure.
The BJP is, indeed, being hotly pursued by the US. Washington wants to repeat in India something akin to the Musharraf-Benazir power-sharing arrangement in Pakistan!
However, much as the Indian and US elites would like Congress-BJP cohabitation on the nuclear deal (and economic policy), it may not happen. It's not that the BJP has a principled opposition to the deal. Its opposition is opportunistic. Both its ideology and its social base favour the deal. It initiated talks on it while in power.
Yet, the BJP will find it extremely difficult to move from demanding the deal's re-negotiation to supporting it. It will certainly extract a high price, further damaging the Congress's secular credentials.
It would be prudent for the Congress-UPA to abandon the deal, rework its relationship with the Left, and adopt progressive social-economic agendas. The UPA has done well to set up a land reforms commission in response to a recent march of thousands of dispossessed people.
It must do more -- and treat the Left as an asset and a moral beacon. This is the first time that there's no Left-of-centre pressure group, which promotes critical self-reflection, inside the Congress. That function has fallen to the Left.
The UPA's best bet lies in changing its leadership style and committing itself to authentic coalition politics through consensus-building.
Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.
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