Like Kissinger in Beijing

The same motivation energises the US lobbying with the 45 members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and in influencing negotiations for an India-specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Since the US president and the secretary of state have taken personal interest in getting India exceptionalised, it is to be expected that they would bring to bear their influence on reaching a successful conclusion of the process and making India a member of Nuclear Suppliers Group.

There has been some trenchant criticism of the process of India being liberated from the international technology apartheid. Such criticism is a testimony to our vibrant democracy and is in fact vitally necessary when the country undertakes a major reform in policy. Such criticism in fact helps our negotiators in dealing with their interlocutors and in driving as hard a bargain as they can.

The national goal should be clear. It is to get India freed from the technology apartheid to which US subjected it, with increasing international support. If India does not have access to international high technology, it will be difficult for this country to sustain high growth needed to eliminate poverty and become a middle income country. The US in its own national interests has decided that it should have India as a strategic partner if it is to maintain successfully its pre-eminence as a competitive and innovative power in a world of balance of power. Therefore the US is keen to lift the technology apartheid vis-a-vis India. It does not make sense to have India as a strategic partner if it is to be subjected to technology apartheid and denied access to all high technology on the ground that they are all dual use technologies, capable of being applied to development of weapons. This necessitated a U-turn in US policy towards India. Major powers of the world are known to carry out such U-turns in their policies, as US and China did in 1971, 18 years after they fought a bloody war.

Therefore in India there should be a clear assessment of US motivations in trying to build up a partnership with India. That should not be a simplistic one of an imperial superpower, the US, trying to make India a subordinate ally in containing China or merely expanding into the Indian market or dominating Indian foreign policy. Such simplistic perceptions arise out of the ideological fundamentalism of the Cold War bipolar era or a sense of inferiority complex. One can compare this attitude with that of people who opposed economic liberalisation in the nineties on the ground that it would bring the East India Company back, India would not be able to compete on a level playing field and our jobs would all be taken away.

The US acknowledges that the world is today polycentric and consists of a balance of power system with six powers — US, European Union, China, Japan, Russia and India. The Indian leadership played successfully the balance of power game in a bipolar world and that was called nonalignment. Today we have more manoeuvrability and more freedom to play the balancer of power among five powers — and yet because of the unfamiliarity with polycentric balance of power system and the innate lack of confidence, sections of our political class are terrified of US dominance and are reluctant to free themselves from the technology apartheid.

The US would like to get the Indian partnership at the lowest possible cost. That should be our assumption. If India is to get an optimum bargain, then it should increase its manoeuvrability by developing strategic partnerships with Russia, European Union, Japan and even China. But that can be done only if we throw away the shackles of the technology denial regime that we have been subjected to over the last three decades.

This is not purely a matter of nuclear autonomy while that is very important. That nuclear autonomy as well as all other aspects of technological autonomy should be viewed in perspective in the evolving system of international balance of power and the 21st century being an era in which knowledge will be the currency of power. China has a comprehensive strategy of rising peacefully and has cultivated a degree of close relationship with the US in terms of trade, financial relationship, international political cooperation as in the case of Iran in the Security Council.

There is no doubt that this reversal of nuclear apartheid vis-a-vis India signified by the US Congress legislation is a historic move comparable to Kissinger’s trip to Beijing in 1971. India should emulate China and try to exploit this opportunity instead of shying away from it in timidity and self-destructive suspicions. If Dr Manmohan Singh had not displayed a steadfastness of purpose in 1991 but listened to the economic chauvinists of that day and not steered ahead on economic liberalisation in 1991, this country would not be what it is today. As prime minister he needs the same clarity of vision and steadfastness of purpose in steering India towards technological self-reliance through global technological interaction.

The writer is a senior defence analyst