On the brink

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with President George W. Bush at the G-8 Summit in Germany in June 2007. - TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP

The UPA government is in crisis, with the Prime Minister determined to go ahead with the nuclear deal despite the Lefts resistance.

ONE tempestuous moment during the June 25 meeting of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-Left parties coordination committee symbolises, in many ways, the deterioration in the relations between the two sides, both in terms of the India-U.S. civilian nuclear deal and in the larger political sphere.

The moment came in the latter part of the one-and-a-half-hour-long meeting and involved an interaction among Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) general secretary T.J. Chandrachoodan, External Affairs Minister Pranab Kumar Mukherjee and Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat. The build-up to it was provided by the government, which strongly pitched for finalising the India-specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Mukherjee, representing the government, contended that finalising the safeguards text with the Board of Governors of the IAEA would not by itself put the nuclear deal on autopilot with the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). Chandrachoodan responded by paraphrasing an allegory in his mother tongue, Malayalam, which presented the picture of a goat being taken to the slaughterhouse through a series of allurements. He said the Manmohan Singh government should not equate the Left parties with the metaphorical goat and stated categorically that the Left would withdraw support to the government if it sought the IAEA Boards approval of the text of the safeguards agreement.

The manner in which Chandrachoodan depicted the Left position irritated Pranab Mukherjee and he reportedly asked Prakash Karat whether he too subscribed to Chandrachoodans views. Karat was emphatic that the RSP leaders presentation reflected the Lefts collective decision.

According to a number of participants in the meeting, there was nothing much left to discuss after this bitter exchange. As Prakash Karat acknowledged later in an interaction with Frontline, the positions of the two sides were clearly laid out and the country, evidently, was going through a political crisis. As far as positions on the issues discussed on June 25 were concerned, the Left parties were of the view that proceeding to the IAEA Board would be a violation of the agreement reached by the UPA-Left coordination committee on November 16, 2007. The committee had decided that the government could hold discussions with the IAEA Secretariat on the India-specific safeguards on the condition that the outcome of the talks would be presented to the committee for its consideration.

On June 25, the Left parties pointed out that the outcome of the talks had not been presented fully before the committee. And they made it clear that they were not ready to allow the government to finalise the text of the safeguards agreement unless the government fulfilled its November 16 commitment.

The government, on its part, said it should be allowed to finalise the safeguards agreement. Once that was done, it offered to come back to the Left parties for more detailed discussions, involving possible course correction measures too. In the run-up to the June 25 meeting, UPA leaders such as Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said that once the safeguards agreement was finalised, the government would even be ready to take a Sense of the House before moving to complete other formalities for the operationalisation of the nuclear deal.

By all indications, it was not merely the specifics discussed during the run-up to and in the course of the June 25 meeting that generated a feeling in the Left parties that they were being prepared as potential targets for political salami slicing. According to a number of senior Left leaders, many political manoeuvres of the UPA and subsequent developments in the period between December 2007 and June 2008 gave rise to such thinking.

One of the factors that contributed significantly to the growing distrust was the political context of the November 2007 agreement between the two sides. It was clear even then that the UPA government would not be able to finalise the nuclear deal in a politically legitimate manner. The majority of the political parties, representing the majority of Members of Parliament, were opposed to the deal. The principal opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was opposed to the deal. So were the Left parties, whose support was vital for the governments survival.

Several constituents of the UPA, such as the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), the M. Karunanidhi-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) were of the view that there was no need to push the deal through at the cost of the government.

In such a context, the UPA-Left parties agreement of November 2007 was, in terms of realpolitik, perceived overwhelmingly as a face-saving device for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and other ardent advocates of the India-U.S. strategic partnership, which would allow them to make an honourable exit from commitments to formalise the nuclear deal.

The perception was as follows: The government goes to the IAEA Secretariat, negotiates the safeguards text, and places the draft before the UPA-Left coordination committee for evolving its final findings. The final findings, given the larger political situation in the country and in Parliament, would have gone against the deal and this would have allowed the Prime Minister to state that even though he wanted the deal it was not possible because of his political commitment to the UPA-Left coordination committee.

Such an honourable exit, it was analysed within both the UPA and the Left, would help maintain the broad secular grouping that sustained the UPA government at the Centre. It was also considered, at that time, that the process of discussing with the IAEA Secretariat, getting back to the UPA-Left coordination committee and eliciting its clearance would be such a time-consuming affair that the U.S. would dump the deal.

It was surmised then that the U.S. would have to finalise and operationalise the deal before February 2008, when the processes for the election of the President and the members of Congress were to be initiated. Important constituents of the UPA, such as the RJD, the NCP and the DMK, and a number of senior leaders of the Congress and the Left parties shared this perception in November 2007. According to several senior UPA and Left leaders, even Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who is also the UPA chairperson, was party to this view.

Even so, there was a stream of opinion, especially among circles close to the Prime Minister, that once the IAEA Secretariat cleared the text of the safeguards agreement a special meeting of the IAEA Board of Governors could be convened at short notice paving the way for the finalisation of the text and the operationalisation of the deal.

The scenario perceived by advocates of this view did visualise a violation of the November 16 UPA-Left agreement. The Left leadership, however, did not consider this view as a serious option at that time. But the sequence of events between December 2007 and June 2008 seems to have proved them wrong.

The Prime Minister and his close associates consistently gave the impression that they were seeking to devise ways and means to operationalise the deal. The thinking within the Congress in the run-up to the December 2007 elections to the Gujarat Assembly and the May 2008 elections to the Karnataka Assembly was that the job of pushing the nuclear deal would become easy for the Prime Minister and his associates if the Congress achieved good results. But that was not to be.

In the run-up to the Karnataka elections, the understanding within the Congress was that becoming the single largest party even without a clear majority would be sufficient to impel the deal to its finalisation stage. The first move by the Congress after the disappointing Karnataka results was to postpone the UPA-Left coordination committee meeting scheduled for May 28. It was put off again to to June 18 and then to June 25.

In the interregnum, Manmohan Singh made it clear to his colleagues both in the Congress and in the UPA that he had to fulfil his commitment to U.S. President George W. Bush on the nuclear deal. Otherwise, he reportedly told Sonia Gandhi on June 19, he would have no option but to step down as Prime Minister. He also apparently argued that Indias prestige in the international arena depended on fulfilling the commitment to the U.S. on the deal. Specifically, Manmohan Singh was scheduled to meet Bush at the G-8 Summit in Japan in the first week of July. The Prime Ministers associates felt that he would even decide not to attend the summit if the Congress and the UPA did not fall in line with him.

Immediate reactions to Manmohan Singhs warning from a number of political voices within the Congress and the UPA were that such brinkmanship was not welcome. Congress leaders such as Mani Shankar Aiyar and Salman Khurshid made bold to come up with theoretical objections to Manmohan Singhs position.

Talking to an English-language daily, Mani Shankar Aiyar, the Minister for Panchayati Raj, said what was needed was a new energy paradigm that sought to develop quickly alternatives to nuclear energy. Khurshid, a former Minister of State for External Affairs, questioned his own governments now-or-never approach on the nuclear deal. Indicating that the next government in New Delhi and a new U.S. administration could consider the deal in a new political context, Khurshid said: I cant understand why the [nuclear] deal cannot be renegotiated at a later stage, maybe one year down the line.

Mani Shankar Aiyar even questioned the logic that nuclear energy was the answer to Indias growing energy requirements and dubbed it uni-dimensional thinking. Both the RJD and the DMK made it clear to the UPA chairperson that they did not think that the nuclear deal was more important than the government itself.

In spite of all this, Manmohan Singhs warning had a deep and resounding impact. Sonia Gandhi apparently put all her weight behind the Prime Minister and soon other leaders such as M. Veerappa Moily and Digvijay Singh came up with statements that the Congress was united behind the Prime Minister. Sections of the Congress, led by Pranab Mukherjee, along with its UPA allies such as Sharad Pawar, followed by initiating an exercise aimed at convincing the Left parties about Manmohan Singhs determination on the deal and the predicament in which it had put the UPA and its government.

Many compromise formulas, including one about getting the Sense of the House after finalising the safeguards agreement text with the IAEA, were floated as part of this exercise. None of these found favour with the Left. Amidst all this, sections of the Congress and some international players reportedly sought to strike an understanding with the BJP in order to ensure the safe passage of the text of the safeguards agreement to the IAEA. The offer here, too, apparently, was to place a Sense of the House resolution in Parliament, which the BJP would oppose without forcing or participating in a division of votes.

In a sense, the current confusion had its origins in the positions advocated by former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra (who held the post during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance regime) and BJP national president Rajnath Singh in the past. Mishra famously said that he would support the deal if India were allowed to retain the right to conduct nuclear tests, while Rajnath Singh said, in October 2007, that the BJP could support the deal if the partys concerns were addressed.

The BJP leadership had time and again claimed that it had initiated discussions for a civilian nuclear deal with the U.S. much before the UPA and that proposed deal did not compromise on Indias security concerns. U.S. diplomats, including Ambassador David Mulford, had time and again held negotiations with the party, but this time around there were indications that there was greater pressure on the party.

Statements by those like former party president M. Venkaiah Naidu, which sought to nuance the opposition to the deal with a we are not opposed to strategic relationship with the U.S. position, also aggravated the confusion within the partys rank and file and among observers. However, anti-nuclear deal hawks in the party, such as Arun Shourie and Yashwant Sinha, branded the perception regarding any confusion in the BJP as the creation of vested interests in the media. Talking to Frontline, Yashwant Sinha said only those without common sense could imagine that the BJP would save the Congress and the UPA government at a time when the party was moving from one victory after another against the Congress and other UPA constituents.

Another target of the Congress was the Mulayam Singh Yadav-led Samajwadi Party (S.P.). The S.P has developed common ground with the Congress in Uttar Pradesh in opposing the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) led by Mayawati. However, last year the S.P. forged an alliance of regional parties consisting of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) and the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP). All these parties are opposed to the nuclear deal, leaving the S.P. leadership in a dilemma. On the one hand it is toying with the idea of aligning with the Congress, particularly to boost its prospects in Uttar Pradesh; on the other, it has apprehensions about leaving its erstwhile allies.

The principal objective of the UPA in initiating negotiations with the S.P. and some of the other parties was to ensure greater strength in Parliament, in the event of a trial of strength on the nuclear deal.

The Left parties steered clear of all this confusion and stuck to their position that the nuclear deal was not tenable, politically or in technical and scientific terms. While rejecting the UPA governments proposals on taking the India-specific safeguards agreement text to the IAEA Board, both Karat and Chandrachoodan stressed the political dimensions of the sequence of events.

Karat said the argument by UPA leaders that Indias international prestige would suffer if the nuclear deal was not upheld was not justified because the UPA had several opportunities to tell the world that it was running a coalition government and hence could not push through politically untenable deals. Chandrachoodan argued that the Left had been instrumental in keeping the BJP out of power for the past four years and it was now the UPAs responsibility to keep the saffron party out for the next 10 months.

The days following the June 25 meeting witnessed much confusion in the UPA. While a decision, in principle, had been taken to go ahead with the deal braving the opposition from the Left parties, there was no clarity about the timing. This question of timing had become important because large sections of the Congress and other constituents of the UPA did not want Lok Sabha elections ahead of schedule. If Manmohan Singhs delicacy about meeting President Bush at the G-8 Summit had to be overcome, the UPA would have to proceed to the IAEA Board in July itself, forcing a withdrawal of support by the Left parties and early elections.

The thinking among the UPA constituents was that if the IAEA Board could be approached in September, when the Board was supposed to meet in its natural course, the collapse of the government could be delayed until then, which in turn would push the elections to February 2009, an acceptable two months ahead of schedule.

Clearly, the endgame is on for the UPA government, with only the specifics on the timing to be decided. A decision on the timing could be taken in early July. Until then other issues like spiralling inflation and price rise could well be pushed down the priority line of Manmohan Singh and his associates in the UPA.