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Sooner or later India has to face up to China. China has become an overgrown gorilla, mostly with U.S. financial backing and unbalanced trade. It is beginning to assume a larger-than-required role in Asia. China has already served notice to the United States of its right of dominance in Northeast and Southeast Asia, displacing the United States and Japan.
China is also making inroads in the Indian Ocean by acquiring naval surveillance facilities in Myanmar, signing a contract for the purchase of oil and gas from Myanmar and establishing a naval base in Gwadar in Pakistan.
Hence in strategic terms, China is a danger to all of South Asia including the Indian Ocean littoral states. It therefore should be contained economically, politically and militarily.
When Communists and other leftists oppose the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, they in fact are preventing India from emerging from the shadows of backwardness. The Chinese have had 9 percent growth over 25 years, quadrupling their gross national product and available cash - which is helping them expand further. India has recorded average growth of 5 to 6 percent in 25 years, and does not have enough cash at hand.
China is a much bigger success story. Also, being a communist state, China has tremendous resources at its disposal to implement any aggressive policy.
India is on the right path now, with new economic managers at the helm. It will catch up with China within 20 years. Its sophisticated and high-margin export businesses, like business process outsourcing, cotton textiles, pharmaceuticals, heavy machinery and auto parts will do the trick. This will be possible when bottlenecks such as power and other infrastructure are removed. The Indo-U.S. nuclear deal is one such initiative.
The communists and their fellow travelers in India do not oppose the principal of higher economic growth. They know that the availability of power is one big plus for economic growth. They do not like the nuclear deal because they feel it is anti-China in the long run. More specifically, a prosperous non-communist India may stand in the way of eventual communist domination of the East. Hence they have dwelt on the issue of India's independent foreign policy vis-à-vis the nuclear deal. Unfortunately, not implementing this deal is handing over India's foreign policy to China on a silver platter.
The communists have therefore made a clumsy attempt to stop a major economic initiative. If power availability is not solved early on, it will stand in the way of progress and castigate India permanently as a subservient state both to China and the United States.
China overcame the power shortage hurdle by building huge dirty coal-fired power plants. The Chinese have an abundance of coal. What they forgot is that excessive coal usage kills their own environment with acid rain and smog. Also it greatly adds to global warming. The amount of land under cultivation over the last 15 years in China has dropped by 15 percent, as has food production. This is due to an excessive emphasis on industrialization.
India could adopt the same model and build massive coal-fired power plants. India has all the coal it requires. The cost of power generation would be 15 percent cheaper. But this would come at the cost of damage to agriculture and a polluted countryside. Hence nuclear power presents a solution.
India has no hydroelectric sites left to exploit on a massive scale. Whatever sites are left would require 10 years to bear fruit. Natural gas power is a distant dream, especially since the Iranians, realizing India's predicament, decided to renege on previously negotiated contracts on liquid natural gas exports. Future gas supplies will be offered at a much higher price. Moreover, strategically, it would be a mistake to let Pakistan sit in the driver's seat on India's energy supply line.
As for nuclear energy, India has the technical know-how to build only pint-sized nuclear power plants. The country has limited manufacturing and operating experience even in these plants. Moreover it takes much longer to build these small-sized Indian-designed nuclear power plants. About 40 percent of the hardware and technology have to be imported, and they come with restrictions and safeguards. Worst of all, there is no uranium to feed the reactors. India has very limited supplies of uranium. That is one reason why existing Indian nuclear power plants are running at half capacity.
The Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, along with the necessary Nuclear Suppliers Group approval, will give India the right to buy all nuclear technology, hardware and uranium wherever it likes.
China negotiated a similar nuclear deal with the United States about 15 years ago, but it was far inferior to the one India has negotiated. After 20 years of a mad rush to build coal-fired power plants, China has decided to pause and think about nuclear energy. Any technology it imports will come with severe restrictions and safeguards.
Who else opposes the nuclear deal in India? Besides the communists, two other mild opponents of the deal have emerged. One is political and the other is a group of retired scientists of the Atomic Energy Commission.
The Saffron party, or the Bharatiya Janata Party, has mostly supported the deal. It was BJP politicians, under Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who first proposed the deal to the United States in 2002. Now they feel that current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has robbed them of glory. Their main opposition is that the deal compromises India's ability to develop nuclear weapons in the future to keep pace with China and Pakistan. This is humbug. A number of Indian nuclear sites would remain outside of restrictions and safeguards, hence could keep India fully equipped with nuclear weapons.
As for the Indian scientists at the Atomic Energy Agency, they are a pampered lot. Their success has been mediocre over 60 years. Now they see their coveted position compromised with technology imports, hence they mildly oppose the deal.
Unfortunately for the ruling party, the communists and their fellow travelers were dead set on sabotaging the deal. That was last month. Then the communists started to watch the polls. With massive public support for the deal, they slowly began to soften their opposition. Only recently did they voice approval for India talking to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is step in the right direction.
Unfortunately for the communists, problems in Nandigram, a village where communist thugs forced the acquisition of land for a special economic zone, came to the front. This bad publicity made them nervous, followed by riots in Kolkata. Finding themselves on the wrong side of public sentiment, they have become much wiser.
Bad management of Nandigram and the Kolkata riots have sent the communists into deep distress. They fear losing power in Kolkata as well as losing representation in Parliament if snap polls are held soon. Hence their opposition to the nuclear deal is slowly withering away. They may grudgingly approve the deal.
Looking at all alternatives, it appears the Indian government has made the right choice. Atomic energy is rapidly evolving, with better safeguards and better design. In addition India will become a recognized nuclear power and recipient all future technologies as these are developed. Indian scientists can continue their quest for fast breeder and thorium reactors. When these are commercially successful, these plants can be built in India or exported.
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(Hari Sud is a retired vice president of C-I-L Inc., a former investment strategies analyst and international relations manager. A graduate of Punjab University and the University of Missouri, he has lived in Canada for the past 34 years. ©Copyright Hari Sud.)
