T N Ninan: A hostage in office

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

Manmohan Singh knew before signing that the Communists were opposed to the Indo-US nuclear deal. He went ahead and signed anyway, after defending it in ringing tones in Parliament. His Cabinet then put its stamp on the deal, and his non-Communist allies sang its praises. When the Communists spoke up, Dr Singh told them to like it or lump it, only to beat a retreat. Sonia Gandhi then said that those opposed to the deal were the enemies of development, only for her party managers to put it out that she had the BJP in mind and not the Communists, as though one kind of opposition to nuclear power is anti-development and another kind of opposition is pro-development. Now the Congress party and its minders have to all appearances sold their Prime Minister and his deal down the river in order to avoid elections and give the (it is hard to say whose it is any more) government a further lease of life. Dr Singh says it is not the end of life. Which is true enough, but it could be the end of Manmohan Singh.

Consider the different credibility gaps. Did the Prime Minister mean what he said when he said that India needed nuclear energy, that the deal would help India break free from a straitjacket, that this would herald a new relationship with the United States? Each one of those three was an important objective; to kill all three birds with one stone would have been a stellar achievement. Now, by the look of things, it may not come to pass. Then, whether the United States says it or not, it will be furious after an eager President Bush has expended whatever little political capital he still had to try and get the deal through the US Congress, running the gauntlet of the nuclear hawks. Washington knows now that it has bet on an unreliable horse "" after all, it is not just the Communists who stood in the way but also the BJP, whose Prime Minister had once called the US India's "natural ally". On top of which, in several key capitals of the world which our diplomats have roamed in search of a positive vote in the Nuclear Suppliers Group, New Delhi stands considerably diminished. If the deal is in fact dead and buried, it is a diplomatic reverse of the kind that India has not suffered for a long time. And it makes it next to impossible for Dr Singh to take any more serious diplomatic initiatives in the 19 months he has left. Hobbled at home on the economic reforms front, and now unable to deal abroad, Dr Singh gives the appearance of being Prakash Karat's hapless hostage.

Or, perhaps survival does matter more than anything else. And who is to argue the opposite when the economy continues to power along, there is communal peace and the country is not consumed by any of several potential crises simmering on the backburners. In the larger calculus, surely those count for more than a nuclear bargain. And that, one presumes, is what Dr Singh meant when he said that while the failure of the nuclear deal to go through would be a disappointment, it would not be the end of life. Still, it bears recalling that many of "his" government's major initiatives (like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme) are things that the Prime Minister has no faith in. He also has little control over who are his Cabinet colleagues (A Raja's shift to the communications portfolio was announced by M Karunanidhi in Chennai). Dealt a weak hand, and handicapped by a non-political background, this is either a supremely wise Prime Minister who knows when (and when not) to go into battle, or someone who simply will not stand up for his convictions and will choose the path of least resistance, every time. Dr Singh likes to tell his friends who express their disappointment to him that politics is the art of the possible but, as someone once responded, leadership consists of expanding the range of possibilities.