Quick, how many joint statements between leaders of nations have their own “anniversaries”! July 18 marked 10 years of the Manmohan Singh-George Bush joint statement that ultimately led to the India-US nuclear deal, and high profile celebratory events have been held and opinion articles written to mark the occasion. Unusual, to say the least, for a piece of diplomatic paper, except when you consider its revolutionary intent and profound implications, some of which are yet to unfold.
Perhaps an even more remarkable date is March 25, 2005. That was the day Mr Bush’s secretary of state Condoleezza Rice announced to the world, nine days after a private conversation with Dr Singh, that the US was “ready to assist India’s rise to global power”, including as a military power. It’s not often in history that an incumbent superpower handpicks a potential “successor” to arm and train, especially when its own vitality is still intact.
That was the strategic logic behind the nuclear deal: America and India had to quickly go from being “estranged democracies” to being “strategic partners” — economically, militarily and in the values they espoused — if the America-led international order was to survive in the face of China’s rise. And for that, the US realised, its own nuclear sanctions against India was the biggest hurdle and had to be removed.
Yet, critics of the deal continue to pan it by framing the debate narrowly in nuclear terms alone, making their case on three points: First, that the nuclear deal has not done anything for the growth of nuclear power in India; not a single imported nuclear power reactor has come in the 10 years since the Singh-Bush joint statement. True, but is that what we were after in the first place? India’s concern at the time of the nuclear deal negotiations was to obtain access to uranium, which we were fast running out of, for our existing nuclear reactors. The nuclear deal has given India access to that vital fuel, and allows us to expand our nuclear power programme beyond today’s low level. Whether we do so by importing reactors or by building more and bigger indigenous power reactors, a capability that we now have, is our choice. If imported reactors come at a cost acceptable to us, we benefit by being able to accelerate the power programme. If they don’t, it’s not our loss.
Second, that even while the US was negotiating the deal it also worked with other nuclear suppliers to deny India reprocessing and enrichment technologies, which the critics say India lacks. The fact of the matter is India is proficient and, at this time, self-sufficient in reprocessing technology. The world will recognise this when India starts its plutonium-fed 500 MW prototype fast breeder reactor (PFBR) in Kalpakkam, expected in a few weeks from now. An important aside, the PFBR, as one top US Nuclear Regulatory Commission official visiting Kalpakkam in 2009 wrote in the visitor’s diary, makes India “the world’s leader” in fast breeder reactor technology — something the Americans were not unaware of when they offered the nuclear deal.
Third, critics argue that nuclear power is not the way to go because it is, according to them, expensive. Think for a moment: If 1.5 billion Indians are to have a per capita power consumption of at least the current world average of over 3,000 kilowatt hour per year by at least 2030, India’s power generation has to be stepped up over six times the present capacity. Are we going to do it all using coal, imported oil and gas, or even solar? We would be either drowning in coal pollution and dying by the millions or we would be drowning in debt, or most likely both.
The only source of power that can get us there in a sustainable way is nuclear power. What’s more, it’s only the Indian closed fuel-cycle path — that is, using spent fuel from our current power reactors to fuel next-generation fast breeder reactors, thus deriving maximum power from every gram of uranium available while reducing the amount of nuclear waste that will need to be stored for long-term to negligible amounts — that is sustainable, both economically and environmentally. It’s a view the rest of the world is coming around to.
In the final analysis, here’s what’s significant about the nuclear deal: America put India in the nuclear doghouse, America offered to get us out of it in its own self-interest, and we seized the opportunity. Thanks to one much reviled and ridiculed man, Dr Manmohan Singh. It may not be presently acceptable in India to acknowledge Dr Singh’s leadership on the nuclear deal, but perhaps the best tribute to him has already come from US vice-president Joe Biden last week when he said, Dr Singh “gambled the future of his government on a vision for the future of his nation” and described him as a man who knew “what principle it was worth losing over”.
When decision-making in the Bharatiya Janata Party was in the hands of the party’s former “Delhi quartet”, they raged over the nuclear deal and said they would scrap it if they came to power. Fortunately, Prome Minister Narendra Modi has shown better sense. He may not have acknowledged Dr Singh publicly on the issue, but not only has he stuck to the nuclear deal and the logic behind it, he has even expanded and accelerated the India-US strategic partnership.
A good measure of what the Singh-Bush joint statement has helped paved the way for will come when the Indian Navy gets the latest US technology for fighter jets to take off and land on future Indian aircraft carriers. By itself, it may seem like a small thing, but think about it: the one area where the India-China competition is hotting up rapidly is on the high seas, especially in the Indian Ocean, where China has become an uncomfortably large presence.
