Two articles from Deccan Chronicle, 20 Aug., 2007
Ode to the Left in Deccan Chrnocile, 20 Aug., 2007
Left has a problem for every solution
By Suhel Seth
There has been excessive criticism about the Left parties with relevance to the Indo-US nuclear deal: the Prime Minister has been courageous, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has been pragmatic and Prakash Karat has been stern. I have often heard industrialists crib about the Left, on how the Left is coming in the way of real progress. Ram Jethmalani, at a dinner in Mumbai last week, told me how he had written a letter to the Prime Minister expressing support on the nuclear deal and he too felt that the Left was barking up the wrong tree.
Much has been written on the nuclear deal. Frankly, I just don’t give a damn. While everyone is concerned about relations with the United States and the nuclear issue, my anger stems from the fact that even today, the Delhi-Gurgaon connector is a mess. T.R. Baalu, the minister, must be thrown out. This shameful act of delays and more delays cannot be tolerated, but more of that later, since, as I said, everyone is targeting the Left.
I believe India has a great need for the Left and their way of thinking.
We need the lunatic fringe amongst us, or else, what will the news channels cover? We need to see footage of some real old men determining the future of a really young country from their own impoverished ivory (or perhaps paper, in their case) castles, and telling us what we need to do.
The Left is the rightful naysayer that every country needs. I was born and raised in Bengal, and thus I know the DNA of the Left very well. They are classic bullies when they need to be. Essentially, they are cowards, and finally, Dr Manmohan Singh has understood that.
They always bark, but can never bite, because the leash is elsewhere — in some godforsaken province in China. And like most things that emerge from Bengal, the Left has a problem for every solution, which is why we need them.
We are a country which specialises in tabling why things cannot be done. Ask an Indian to do something and he will tell you why it cannot be done. This is the mantra of our bureaucracy as well. A bureaucrat is essentially a Leftist in the manner he thinks, and more importantly, the way he works. Which is why a bureaucrat never really works, he makes others work. He is there to stall, not solve, and that to my mind is an endearing quality for which we should thank, and not castigate, the Left.
The Left has every right to be angry. The States they run are run-down but the rest of the country is progressing very well without them. This irks them, because their primary belief of equality says that every Indian must be equally poor and not equally rich.
The Left parties hate progress because progress means money, and since they believe in being and behaving poor, riches find no place in their lives. Which is why they will wear linen shirts only when they are not on television. The Left cannot also tolerate any form of globalisation or economic integration. For them, globalisation is Cuba talking to India, and not India talking to the United States, which is why they are opposed to everything that emanates from the US.
They hate George Bush, but then they’ve hated everything that’s American. They hate David Mulford too (the US ambassador to India), but in this regard they are in a majority.
You have to empathise with the Left: they all come from simple backgrounds. The Left is also very honest. And this is for real. You will never see them involved in any scandal relating to money. Their party presidents will never be caught on camera accepting Rs 1 lakh and silly amounts like that.
The Left truly has greater integrity than any other political party, and that is perhaps another reason why we need them so desperately in India.
All said and done, living with the Left is a bit like living with your mother-in-law. You do it in order to maintain peace and harmony, but then it is a powder-keg waiting to explode, and who better to experience this than the sedate Dr Manmohan Singh? There was a time, during Atal Behari Vajpayee’s regime, when I said that the women in his alliance would give him sleepless nights: today the gender has been replaced by an ideology, and I pity Dr Singh’s plight.
Sleeping with the Left is a bit like sleeping with an elephant. Dangerous to say the least, because you never know when it might roll over.
and
Curious Silence on Hyde
By Pran Chopra
Like all his earlier statements on the subject, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statement in Lok Sabha on August 13 on the 123 Agreement was a model of firmness, precision and clarity. It would have done credit to a top level nuclear scientist for its grasp of intricate technicalities. But it does that all the more to him, because it comes from a lifelong economist, who has been additionally wrapped up for years now in the political intricacies of governance in his kind of circumstances.
But that only adds to the mystery of the absence of any reference by him to a key element in India’s nuclear relations with America, namely the Hyde Act, which, in most Indian comments in recent months, has been held to be the villain of the piece and chief cause of all the doubts which have lately arisen in India regarding the viability of the Indo-US nuclear "deal." It also makes one wonder whether and how far America considers itself to be bound by the 123 Agreement.
Correspondingly, it also raises the question whether India would be better off without the Agreement, that is, whether the shortcomings of the Agreement outweigh all of its advantages, of which it certainly has some.
This question had always existed. But now it has been underscored by the Prime Minister himself in his statement of August 13, in which he has mentioned some of the circumstances in which the Agreement could collapse. Some of them are rooted in the Agreement.
Some more, and more serious ones, have been added by the Hyde Act.
For a reason which is better considered later, the Prime Minister’s statement is silent on the Hyde Act. Regarding 123, the statement is heavily weighted in favour of the Agreement. The points he has picked up from the Agreement are not only the centre, but the substance of his statement in Lok Sabha.
The Agreement admits that it may collapse under the weight of the disagreements between the two countries over some of its provisions. It explains that therefore an "elaborate and multi-layered consultation process" has been included with regard to any "future events" that may be cited by either party for seeking "termination of cooperation under the Agreement" or termination of the Agreement itself.
That is probably an amplification of the elegant remark by the Prime Minister in another context regarding what would happen if India carried out a nuclear explosion for testing a nuclear weapon.
He said, "We have the right to test. They have the right to protest." That means either side will take such a step, whether it be "testing" or "protesting," only after considering the balance between the advantages of taking that step or foregoing the right to take it.
In other words, each country will have to consider the balance of advantage between its reasons for terminating the Agreement and the reasons why it has come thus far for reaching it. Of course, that will depend less upon the wording of the text of any agreement than upon the difference between the bargaining power of each country today and what that difference might be at the time when either country may think that the time has come for it to reassess the usefulness of the other country to it.
That distant measure of the difference at that time between the power status of either country in the eyes of the other will depend upon how well each country has, in the intervening period, utilised the power assets that it has today for maximising them by the time it reaches that critical date.
{Kicking the can downstream.}
So, an added question before India today turns out to be whether its efforts to maximise its bargaining power by that future date will be helped or hindered by India agreeing to the 123 Agreement today, or alternatively by carving out such alternatives to the Agreement as it may, today or tomorrow, forge with its present bargaining power.
Compared with that, it is relatively easy to speculate why he decided to remain silent on the Hyde Act. It could be a tactical reason, that he might as well take advantage of the absence of the Left opposition from the House to confine the debate to the Agreement, because the remaining opposition in the House was not too greatly opposed to it.
Or it could be the broader reason that it would be better to conserve its firepower on the Hyde Act for the fuller debate on nuclear and other foreign policy issues which would materialise not too far hence.
Or it could be a still broader consideration. India’s contention has all along been that it considers itself bound only by the bilateral agreement between the two countries, and not by any domestic legislation, such as the Hyde Act, which America may cite as justification for considering itself empowered to act against India for any act which America may unilaterally consider to be culpable. Silence on the Hyde Act would be a sufficient reiteration of that position, without getting into a war of words with the opposition which may involve the government in verbalisations which would embarrass the governments of both countries at a time when both are jointly dealing with very sensitive issues. That would be a sufficient if silent reiteration of his position that, as quoted earlier, "We have the right to test. They have the right to protest."
{I think this is the reason.}
But that makes it all the more necessary for India, and that without any avoidable waste of time, to draw the world’s attention to the many respects in which the Hyde Act goes beyond the limits of the Agreement. India must insist that before America begins to cross those limits it must clarify whether it is willing to comply with the 123 Agreement itself, and to sort out any gaps in interpretation which could be an embarrassment later to either country.
This responsibility devolves individually upon each member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. A decision by the group as a whole but equally binding upon every member can fudge the judgment of each member on the many-sided issue before us. The issue is whether India is violating the 123 Agreement or America is by insisting that the Hyde Act must take precedence over the Agreement. That issue must decide how much of the responsibility, and the penalty, for a breakdown of the 123 Agreement, if it were to occur, should fall upon India, as a joint custodian of that Agreement along with America, and how much upon America as the unilateral author of the Hyde Act.
Pran Chopra is the doyen of op-ed writers in India. He always wries in Indian interests. I would take his views quite seriously.
is she and her poor family will be financially, socially well-off by this association. 