By Amulya Ganguli
Considering that the Manmohan Singh government has generally been seen to be bullied by the Left into retreating on various issues such as the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, economic reforms and so on, it is worth noting that the prime minister has been able to consistently hold his ground on the India-US nuclear deal.
Although the commissars routinely make contrary noises on the subject, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that they will not go to the extent of toppling the government on this issue. Yet, anti-Americanism has long been a cornerstone of communist policy.
That much was evident when, notwithstanding the Left’s seeming acquiescence in the nuclear agreement, it lost no time in condemning the recent visit of the American nuclear-powered warship Nimitz to Indian waters. Earlier, the comrades of West Bengal had protested vigorously against the holding of a joint Indo-American air exercise at the Kalaikunda air base in the state.
The Left has also been critical of the pursuit of the so-called neo-liberal economic policies by the government at the behest of, according to the communists, the US-dominated international financial institutions. Currently, the comrades are putting up stiff resistance to the entry of multinationals in the retail sector, with Walmart being their latest bugbear.
But when it comes to the nuclear pact, the Left is surprisingly accommodating, remaining largely satisfied with a token expression of their misgivings. They are perceptibly less strident compared to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose spokesmen let it be known that the party was not fully satisfied with the explanations given by the prime minister during a meeting with Atal Bihari Vajpayee and others. The party will now scrutinize the agreement before giving its opinion.
The Left too has said that it will see the fine print of the deal before approving or disapproving of it. But it is clear enough that much of its posturing falls into the category of tokenism because the Left might have been expected to be much more combative in this matter than the BJP, which after all is a right-wing party.
On its part, the Manmohan Singh government has also made it clear that it will not yield ground on this subject although it has retreated where disinvestment or privatization of airports or pension fund reforms are concerned. Its most recent backtracking was on the choice of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, on which the Left apparently held the whip hand.
Is it possible that these retreats of the government are a tactical manoeuvre, intended to lull the commissars into believing that they have the controlling levers in their hand – power without responsibility, as their critics may say – while the government remains unswerving in the sphere which it thinks matters the most as it secures India’s future energy needs through nuclear power?
The government may have calculated that where the economic reforms are concerned, the current hold-up of disinvestments and privatization is only temporary. The country is moving so rapidly along the pro-capitalist path, in contrast to its earlier socialistic pursuits, that there can be no holding back. So, it can allow the Left to play its socialist games for the time being while it pushes ahead with its strategic objective of moving closer to the US and Israel.
So, on the subject of the N-deal, the government is obviously dead serious. As a result, it turned a deaf ear to all criticism from within the scientific establishment and outside when the pact was being negotiated.
There is little doubt that Manmohan Singh sees the agreement as an achievement for which he will be remembered by posterity even more than for economic reforms, which were after all only a response to the call of the times after the collapse of communism.
Perhaps the Left has realized that Manmohan Singh is so determined that he will not hesitate to collide with the comrades head on if the need arises, thereby jeopardizing the government’s stability. It isn’t a risk worth taking, the Left may have calculated, if only because the Americans have conceded some of India’s demands, including those relating to the reprocessing of spent fuel, the continuity of supplies and the conduct of nuclear tests in future.
Apart from helping the government to survive at least till the next general election in 2009, if not beyond, the Left is also aware that it cannot pursue too much of a rightist line because one of its own chief ministers, West Bengal’s Buddhadev Bhattacharjee, is determinedly following neo-liberal policies with his courting of capitalists.
It will be odd, therefore, for the Leftists, and especially their Big Brother, the Communist Party of India-Marxist, to be too critical of America, the home of capitalism, at this stage.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be reached at [email protected])