The government has won some space, if only a wee bit, from its Left allies last Friday on taking the next steps in the implementation of the historic civil nuclear initiative with the US. The Communists have taken their hands off the government’s throat, but have attached a short leash to it. After arguing for more than three months that they will not let the government engage the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on devising India-specific safeguards for the civilian component of the nation’s nuclear programme, the Left has now climbed down to let the talks begin in Vienna. It, however, insists the government cannot conclude the IAEA consultations without its explicit permission.From the traditional perspective, no government in independent India has been subject to this kind of constraint from outsiders on its executive privilege to conduct the nation’s foreign policy. That grim political condition today is rooted in the power of the Communists to pull the plug on the UPA. If their moribund ideology had put at risk the hard-won liberation of India from three decades of international nuclear isolation, the Congress seemed to have no option but to lump it. It is no mean political achievement, then, for the government to create some elbow room for reviving its nuclear diplomacy. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh deserves much of the credit for injecting a measure of political will to a government that seemed to wither away in recent weeks. Amidst the reluctance of his own Congress Party to call the Communists’ bluff, it is the PM, through his sheer persistence, who has compelled the Left to yield ground. It is now up to the Department of Atomic Energy and the ministry of external affairs (MEA) to exploit the small window of opportunity and rapidly conclude the talks with the IAEA on an agreed text of the safeguards arrangement. Once the government’s technical and legal flanks are covered, the Congress leadership will have to stare down, once again, the Communists before it can sign the agreement with the IAEA. Friday’s meeting between the UPA and its recalcitrant Left allies has only postponed the inevitable confrontation by a few weeks and not eliminated it. For all their political bravado, the Communists have never been so vulnerable to pressure from the Central government after the Nandigram fiasco in West Bengal. The Congress leadership, surely, is not incapable of exploiting this weakness and “reoccupy”, if you will, its own constitutional turf to conduct the nation’s diplomacy.
