Why India gets a great deal

Our reliance on coal meeting 50 per cent of India’s energy needs and oil meeting 33 per cent is excessive. The coal sector is inherently inefficient and environmental issues, including large scale pollution, ash handling, disposal and logistics, operate as shackles. Oil reliance by India is dangerous since the current dependency of over 70 per cent on imports is likely to increase to more than 90 per cent because of dwindling reserves. If India’s entire oil reserves were used to provide India’s entire energy requirements, they would last only for 7 years. At the current rate of use, they would last for a maximum of 22 years.

Nuclear power currently accounts for an insignificant 3 per cent of total Indian energy in comparison to France’s 79 per cent, Belgium’s 60 per cent, Sweden’s 42 per cent, Switzerland’s 39 per cent and Japan’s 31 per cent. Surely it is not over-ambitious to aspire to reach UK’s 21 per cent and the US’s 20 per cent? Nuclear power more efficiently produced and far less environmentally unclean. One ton of uranium produces far more energy than several thousand tons of coal or several barrels of oil. With India likely to beat Japan and Russia to become the world’s third largest energy consumer (behind the US and China), it is vital that we look for alternative sources of energy. With gas being available in limited quantities, nuclear power is a natural and obvious option.

• Conclusion 1: The proposed agreement is, first, one of energy security and cooperation and not about weapons non-proliferation.

• Conclusion 2: In view of the inefficiencies qua coal and import dependency qua oil, nuclear power is the best alternative. Even a marginal increase is a net gain.

It would be foolish to look a gift horse in the mouth after 40 years of nuclear isolation. If we can end such exclusion by clinching the deal, while guarding our security and strategic concerns, it would be a win-win opportunity. Those who criticise never tell us how to reduce coal and oil dependencies or how to power a continuing 8 per cent growth rate for the next few decades. Without solid energy security, India’s current takeoff would be prematurely aborted.

• Conclusion 3: If all that we lose for this additional nuclear power is subjecting our civilian plants to inspection without touching our military ones, it should be a very tempting proposal for India.

The second issue is the scope and ambit of the deal. What does it really mean for India and what will it really get for India? India is going to be the only country in the world which while continuing to possess a bomb, while being a de facto declared nuclear power with an on-going strategic military weapons programme, a country which has insisted on not signing the NPT, a country which is not going to subject all its nuclear installations to international safeguards, will yet be given the benefit of receiving supplies of nuclear fuel and equipment from the international community. For over 40 years this has been denied to India. We have had to scrounge around, beg, borrow or steal or make do with inefficient alternatives to run our nuclear programme. Several of our reactors are highly under-used. They have perforce to be run inefficiently and well behind deadlines producing desirable quantities at much higher than reasonable costs to the nation.

There have been several other adverse and prejudicial side effects. For example, we wanted the Cray super computer for a long time since it would be invaluable for meteorological purposes. It was denied to us on the ground that theoretically it is capable of being put to use for nuclear purposes. Therefore, such dual use technology could not be sold/imported. Such intrusive side effects would now be minimised.

Countries other than India have realised the vital place of energy security and grabbed opportunities with both hands, executing agreements much more one-sided, prejudicial and intrusive than the 123 Agreement proposed between India and the US. It is ironical that China, one of the original five nuclear powers, arduously sought and willingly executed two such agreements — one with the US on nuclear equipment and the other with Australia — of a far more stringent and intrusive nature than the proposed 123 Agreement. No wonder that Pakistan and some of our other “friends” have been trying desperately to prevent the execution of the proposed agreement.

Yes, we would be subjecting our nuclear plants to international scrutiny and IAEA safeguards. But it is we who decide which plants are going to be used for civilian nuclear power. Theoretically, we may continue to add all future plants to our military strategic programme without designating a single one to the civilian side. Unless they are so designated they would not be subject to any IAEA safeguards. We will be able to take this sovereign decision in the context of our security concerns, our internal assessments and not be subject to international scrutiny on that ground. More, we would, for the first time, be officially recognised to possess such a strategic programme and yet receive nuclear fuel and equipment from the international community.

To the US’s credit, it has been sensitive to the sequencing of the proposed 123 Agreement. We could have been asked to sign the 123 document first and thereafter wait for US legislation. Instead, US legislation has been passed first and although we have to take all possible steps to get ready to consummate the IAEA safeguards agreement, we are not obliged to sign the agreement until we first have in place the 123 Agreement with the US. The 123 international treaty will follow, not precede, the US legislation and will precede the IAEA safeguards agreement, which is the best of both the worlds as far as India is concerned. None of the critics comment on the basic equation — we had none of the above listed benefits for the last forty years, in return for which we are subjecting ourselves to international inspections of only those facilities we choose to designate as civilian.

• Conclusion 4: India has been given a unique status in the world and has a preferential one of its kind agreement clearly beneficial in terms of maintaining our military/strategic programme, ending dual use technology denial and accepting a pro-India sequencing of the three agreements.

• Conclusion 5: Some countries have grabbed similar opportunities at far more stringent terms than being negotiated with India.

One of the major issues on which the proposed deal is subject to scathing criticism is the reference to several provisions of the US legislation which are seen as derogating from and making serious inroads into India’s sovereignty, Indian foreign policy and decision-making. This criticism arises from a lack of understanding of the true nature of the US legislative process. Although, both India and the US share the same colonial masters, the British parliamentary model of governance was replicated mainly in the Commonwealth, not in the US. The US Constitution reflects the most operationally powerful form of the separation of powers doctrine anywhere in the world. In the British and Indian systems, the executive, in a sense, is a sub-set or sub-committee of the legislature. The government of the day initiates, pilots and creates legislation in both UK and India. Private member bills are nothing more than pious declarations of intent and policy which, although debated with vigour on lazy Friday afternoons, hardly ever end up as legislation.

In contrast, the US President and his cabinet are completely insulated from the US Legislature. The president and his cabinet colleagues not only are not members of the legislature but the government of the day may have no hand in the initiation or creation of legislation. If a loose analogy is permissible, US legislation bears the imprint of a private member initiative (the present Act is called the Henry Hyde Act after its coauthor) and despite the bewildering procedure of simultaneously having two bills on the same subject in the House of Representatives and Senate, culminates in legislation after an arduous process of reconciliation by a Joint Committee of both Houses.

This reality of US legislation has direct implications for the Indo-US agreement. Large parts of US legislation are hortatory; they are pious declarations of intent or sanguine intonations of hope and expectation but do not set out mandatory legislation. Such portions are merely advisory and recommendatory.

There are sections in the new Hyde Act like section 101 which talks of “sense of the House” — unheard of in the Commonwealth. By its very words, the US Act is deliberately open-ended. Section 103 of the Hyde Act has a similar title “Statements of Policy”. That remains recommendatory and cannot and should not be treated as binding US legislation.

To be concluded
The writer is an MP and national spokesperson of the Congress party