“The nuclear deal is expected to increase nuclear power generation in India from 4,000 megawatts to 20,000 “megawatts by 2020. It will also spur world economic growth as nuclear plant projects worth more than $150 billion will be up for grabs by developed countries. The world economy, which is facing a serious downturn, is expected to get a big boost from nuclear energy investments in India.”
India and the US on Friday 10th October 2008 operationalised the nuclear deal by signing the 123 Agreement. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice put the final seal on the agreement at an impressive ceremony held in the Benjamin Franklin Room of the State Department, USA, culminating a crisis-ridden process initiated on July 18, 2005 in Washington! During Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit for talks with the then US President George W Bush.
“Both India and the US Administration have now completed all our internal procedures to be able to sign this path-breaking agreement”; Mukherjee said after signing the agreement. The agreement paves the way for entry of American companies into the Indian nuclear market after a gap of three decades.
“Today is an important day for India-US relations, for global energy security and for our common Endeavour promote sustainable development while addressing environmental challenges”, he said at the State Department.
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Earlier, Rice said that 123 Agreement was unprecedented and demonstrated the vast potential for strategic partnership between India and the United States. She said that the nuclear deal was not just nuclear cooperation. “Today we look to the future, a shared future. Let us use the partnership to fight against terrorism, to try a new socialist agenda for the 21st century.”
“India and the US can do all these together. Now there is nothing we cannot do”, the Secretary of State said. “Prime Minister Singh” literally risked his political future’ for the Indo-US nuclear agreement and remade his government again with the support he needed” Rice said referring to the withdrawal of support to the NDA government by the Left parties.
The formal signing ceremony of the bilateral agreement could not take place during Rice’s visit to New Delhi last week due to India’s concerns on certain riders in the US Congressional Legislation on the nuclear deal. It held after US President George W Bush assured New Delhi that the new law made no changes on fuel supply assurance commitments or the terms of the agreement.
India’s Cabinet Committee on Political Affairs also gave the go ahead signal to Mukherjee to sign the agreement after approving the pact initiated by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Bush in 2005. The signing ceremony was attended among others by India’s Ambassador to the US Ronen Sen and senior State Department officials.
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The Nuclear deal entered into by India and the US as part of the Indo-US Agreement signed by President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh during the latter’s recent visit to the US has been received differently by diverse quarters in India and abroad. Under the deal, India has undertaken to separate its civilian and military nuclear facilities, place the former under full-scope International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, take various measures to prevent export of nuclear weapons technology, contribute to other international nonproliferation regimes, as well as to continue with its declared moratorium on nuclear tests.
In other ‘words, India would comply with all obligations of Nuclear Weapons States· (NWS) which are signatories to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) that India has consistently held to be discriminatory and has thus never joined. On its part, the US Administration has agreed steer appropriate provisions through the US legislature enabling supply of fuel to Tarapur (built with US assistance in the 60s and already under IAEA safeguards, but with fuel supplies and other technological assistance cut off due to US sanctions imposed in the wake of India’s first nuclear test Pokhran-I in 1974) and other nuclear power plants and transfer of other nuclear energy technology by the US to India, as well as to push for similar measures in the 44 countries Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and related actions by the IAEA. In the Agreement, the US has agreed to recognize India as a ‘leading country with advanced nuclear technology’, thus granting it a de facto NWS status.
Some sections in both India and the US have hailed it as a major breakthrough in Indo-US relations, perhaps even the biggest ever shift in bilateral ties with the US virtually admitting India into the nuclear-weapons club and opening the doors to the lifting of all restrictions on India acquiring civilian nuclear technology and fuel apart from other dual-use technologies. In India, several media commentators, former nuclear-establishment scientists and ‘strategic experts’, and leading lights of the BJP, have attacked the deal as a betrayal of Indian security interests, a surrender of its sovereignty in nuclear matters and a blow to its independent nuclear capability. Both these extreme assessments are not merely exaggerations but also fundamentally erroneous.
On the other hand, a few divergent voices, including and especially that of the CPI(M) have, while being been sharply critical of the overall Indo-US Agreement, the threats to India’s independent foreign policy and the implicit acceptance by India of US hegemony in world affairs, have viewed the nuclear deal itself in a different light. There are indeed many important issues that the general discourse has not brought out with regard to India’s strategic vision, its nuclear policy both civilian and military, its energy security as well as the near-term geo-political scenario and the role of the US in it.
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Many politicians and strategic experts have sharply criticized the nuclear deal for seriously compromising Indian security and its sovereign decision-making regarding the size of its nuclear ‘deterrent’ (read arsenal). They argue that separating India’s military nuclear facilities from its civilian power plants and placing the latter under IAEA safeguards will limit the quantity of fissile material made available to the former, effectively capping India’s nuclear arsenal and making it more costly since dedicated military nuclear facilities would have to be set up.
The underlying assumption of this critique is clearly indicated that Indian security lies foremost in nuclear weaponisation and its unfettered expansion. This militarist strategic perception has consistently been opposed by the Left and the broader Peace and Disarmament Movement, a position vindicated by Pakistan’s tit-for-tat overt nuclear weaponisation and its Kargil adventure despite the mutual ‘deterrence’. Peace-loving forces in India have long held that Indian security is not dependent on nuclear weapons, and have demanded first a cap and then a roll-back of the nuclearisation of India and the South Asian region.
In practical terms, the deal is expected to assist India in its quest for nuclear fuel towards its stated goal of 20,000 megawatts of nuclear power in the next decade compared to the present about 4,000 megawatts, a target India has set keeping in mind its projected energy requirements and the cost and environmental limitations of conventional energy options based on oil, gas, coal and hydro power. India has limited sources of natural uranium and it will take considerable time to develop thorium based technology. Given the restrictions on supply of nuclear materials by the Nuclear Suppliers Group, sourcing of heavy water from Russia, the mainstay of most nuclear power plants in India, has also become highway problematic. Countries such as Russia and France are also eager to assist in setting up nuclear power plants in India. Reports have suggested that US-based companies such as Westinghouse are also keen to export uranium to India.
In fact, the real regret is that the Agreement contains no mention of universal nuclear disarmament, a goal enshrined in the very Non-proliferation by which the NWS club swears but does everything to prevent. None of the various speeches made by the prime minister in the US even mentioned the Rajiv Gandhi Plan, the last major initiative by India towards this goal. In its eagerness to please the US, if the Congressled UPA could not even remember its own slain leader, it is scarcely surprising that it has totally ignored the commitment made in the Common Minimum Programme to make efforts towards this goal which the Left and the Peace and Disarmament Movement in India take very seriously indeed.