Gurgaon News and Information - General Information, Property, Corporate News, Gurgaon Information Directory, Gurgaon News

THE acrimony of an impending break-up and the intense flirtations of a budding romance have played out in agonising and entertaining slow motion in the corridors of power in the Indian capital last week, leaving everyone guessing about the actual dates and modalities of both the divorce and the wedding.
But the moment came sooner than later. The tantalising uncertainty hanging over the feverish political drama under the shadow of “national interests” vis-a-vis the Indo-US nuclear deal came to an end early this week.
The Left parties, who kept asserting that the threat to withdraw support to safeguard “national interests” is not an empty one, did pull the rug at last and decided to meet the president today to formally declare their withdrawal of support to the UPA government.
They said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s statements on moving the IAEA soon had rendered any further talks on the issue meaningless and wanted the government to prove its majority on the floor of the House.
The Left, which was enjoying power without responsibility, has decided on the break-up after its early attempt to forestall Manmohan Singh’s attendance at the G8 summit failed. It is the Left’s failure to appreciate the value of ending India’s nuclear isolation that has driven the communists off the political cliff.
While the Left’s arguments against a strategic alliance with the US deserve a hearing, its attempts to link India’s nuclear liberation with American “imperialism” have been simply outlandish. The image the Left parties have been beaming so far across to the national audience is that of a confused group, superficial in their loud rhetorical posturing and unable to part ways in one decisive movement before the UPA’s completion of the five-year term.
By far the worst manifestation of the politicisation of the deal, and India’s foreign policy, was the regrettable attempt of the CPM to communalise the issue. Nothing could have been more absurd and avoidable than its remark that those “supporting” the deal would lose their Muslim vote bank.
In the history of Indian democracy, this remark must rank among the most damaging to its secularism and diversity. It is unfair to the Muslim community in India to assume that it opposes the agreement by virtue of religion. This only serves to illustrate how far the party under Prakash Karat has strayed from true Marxism.
The UPA government too was at the end of its tether and was firm this time and proclaimed its resolve to go ahead with the deal. Briefing reporters on the prime minister’s visit to the G8 summit from July 7-9, Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon avoided all questions about timeframe and said: “We want to go ahead with it (the deal), we will do our best, we will go ahead with it as soon as we can….”
“There is absolutely no threat to the UPA government which will sign the nuclear deal with the US in time, come what may. There is no hesitation in this regard,” asserted Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priyaranjan Das Munshi.
The Congress did not leave anything to chance. Intense political activity was unfolding behind closed doors in New Delhi. Samajwadi Party leaders Mulayam Singh Yadav and Amar Singh held back-to-back meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and with UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. After getting former president A P J Kalam’s endorsement of the nuclear pact, the Samajwadi leaders stressed that the nuclear deal is in “national interest”. But if the N-deal has passed muster, details of the “M-deal” remain to be ironed out.
The Congress was obviously putting all its eggs in Mulayam’s basket, hoping that he will sustain the UPA in the numbers game in the Lok Sabha. And Mulayam himself seems ready to leave his erstwhile “friends and comrades” of the Left and the UNPA (the Third Front parties) in the lurch instead of his early plans of leading them against both the Congress and the BJP.
Every party claims it acts in the national interest. But who defines what the nation’s interests are and what are beneficial or not to the nation? The controversy over the nuclear deal reveals the confusion and hypocrisy. In the case of the Left parties, the matter becomes more complex, since in their ideology, the national interest is made to intersect with other interests, specifically those of class.
The Left believes that the deal will bring India too close to the US, so close that India might lose her independence in the realm of foreign policy. So it is the sheep of the Left’s anti-Americanism that is being dressed up as the anti-nuclear deal mutton.
Critics could also point out that communists in India have not always supported policies that are incontrovertibly beneficial to the national interest.
The BJP’s opposition to the deal is inexplicable. The party, which took the last and dramatic step to make India a nuclear power, believes that nuclear power is in India’s national interest. Yet it is opposed to the Indo-US nuclear deal, which will enable India to bring supplies to its starving reactors. Its opposition obviously is to the Congress doing the deal. The deal and what constitutes national interest have come to be identified with the Congress. The fate of the deal is now tied to the continuation of the government that is led by the Congress. But there is no guarantee that had the Congress been in the opposition, it would not have objected to a similar deal if it were being made by a BJP government.
Till the other day, the Samajwadi Party too was opposed to the deal. But its flirtations with the Congress made it a convert overnight, but not before Kalam’s “convincing advice that the deal is in national interest”.
Kalam, of course, is one of India’s foremost missile scientists and the best-loved president. But, surely there’s another reason that he was chosen for the exercise.
He’s Muslim and when he says the deal is in “national interest”, the two political parties hope it’s a powerful antidote to the reactionary clerics who argue otherwise.
The phrase “national interest” has thus become an item in the politicians’ rhetorical baggage. Politicians are not the sole guardians or repositories of national interests. They only make what are matters of national interest into electoral issues to gain votes. The bickerings over the nuclear deal show up Indian politics at its worst. Political interests invariably triumph over those of the nation. Easy options are often preferred to tough decisions. With inflation raging and stock markets plummeting, political stability should be the greatest concern at the moment. But survival in office takes precedence over a creative response to varied challenges facing the nation. And this could be as true of the opposition as it is of the government.