India will go ahead with the Indo-US nuclear deal and Indian officials will be soon in Vienna to hold talks with the IAEA. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is on record that there will be no dilution of the government’s commitment to the deal despite controversies and resistance from a section of the ruling front.

Resistance
Those opposing the deal, chiefly the Leftist parties, who also support the Government from outside, express the concern that Indian interests will be made subservient to that of the US, if the agreement is executed in its present form.

The principal opposition party, Bharatiya Janata Party, sees red in the Hyde Act, which it says will gag India and lead to capping of its indigenous nuclear programme.

However, opinion polls in India suggest that there is overwhelming public support to the deal. The domestic mood is upbeat and the belief is that the deal can catapult India into the 21st-century power bloc.

The government line is that India needs electric power. The extreme power shortage in the country needs to be addressed, either through coal-fired plants or nuclear power. The former is a bad option both in terms of costs and pollution. The nuclear option along with the latest technological innovations, including cold fusion, will be the right way to go.

According to observers, strategically too, the deal is very important to India. An economically resurgent India can check China’s rising dominance both in Southeast Asia and Indian Ocean.

The rising public support in favour of the deal has emboldened the government to cold shoulder the Left parties and go ahead with the deal and if required even force an election to get a fresh mandate. In the US also, there is resistance to the deal. There the impression is that the deal is too liberal on India and bestows it a lot of economic, strategic and diplomatic benefits.

The concerns in the US include India’s future stand on ceasing fissile material production consequent to the deal. Will India go for further testing of nuclear weapons? Another fear is that the deal enables India to stockpile nuclear arsenal and that may lead to a regional arms race.

Argues Daryl Kimbal, analyst at Arms Control Agency, “The deal is silent on terminating the nuclear trade with India if it conducts a nuclear test”.

Adds Kimbal, “The pact even promises India of nuclear fuel supply and advance consent to carry out sensitive nuclear activities that are unprecedented and inconsistent with the legislation approved by Congress last year”.

“To protect its testing options India has obtained an unprecedented US commitment to amass a strategic reserve of nuclear fuel to guard against any supply disruption. Incredibly, the agreement also commits Washington to help New Delhi secure fuel supplies from other countries even if it resumes testing,” argues Kimbal.

NPT Imbroglio
But the policy-making circles in the US affirm that the deal in no way infringes the spirit of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) as India will be taking a number of steps to limit proliferation. India is already doing most of these prescribed things even prior to the agreement.

Some observers say that the concerns in the US about the deal’s impact on the NPT regime are very inflated. It is quite unclear as to how the Indian case will actually change things. There is enough evidence of many states engaging in lots of counterproductive proliferation-related behaviour, even prior to the Indo-US deal.

The examples of North Korea quitting the NPT to produce nuclear weapons and China assisting Pakistan in acquiring a weapons capacity are already on record. These are examples of states taking a negative position vis-a-vis the non-proliferation regime under the garb of defending their private interests. Given that backdrop, the deal is not going to disturb any equilibrium.

A positive fallout of the nuclear deal will be that it will bring about a high degree of transparency on the Indian nuclear programme. India, as a responsible custodian of nuclear weapons and technology can withstand any proliferation related criticism. The agreement requires India to separate its military from its civilian nuclear facilities and open the civilian facilities for international safeguards.

In the short-term, the deal will not do a miracle by adding too much to India’s power wallet; the impact will be felt in the long-term. The hike in civilian nuclear power supply will curtail India’s heavy dependence on fossil fuels. This is crucial in the context of the spiralling energy demands resulting from India’s high economic growth.

Strategic Benefits
On the criticism that the deal may facilitate an expansion of India’s nuclear arsenal, an analyst noted, “Though a larger Indian arsenal could lead to an arms race, strategically its implications are not that bad. Larger nuclear arsenals can deter first-strike impulses and enhance crisis stability.”

On the diplomatic front too, the advantages from the deal are immense. The US and India share many common economic, political and strategic interests. With the US recognising India as a legitimate and responsible nuclear weapons state, the deal has eliminated what the Indian leaders call ‘nuclear apartheid.’

Given the size of the India’s economy, its strategic importance in the Asian region and its democratic principles, the deal is a major breakthrough as a prelude to greater economic, strategic and diplomatic cooperation.

With India coming out of its three-decade long nuclear isolation, it is likely to enjoy the opportunity of sourcing its future supply of nuclear fuel from most of the countries in the Nuclear Suppliers Group. The leading members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) include the US, Japan, France and Russia. To begin nuclear trade, now the NSG has to ratify the guidelines of the deal.

Approach to NSG
Anil Kakodkar, Chairman, India’s Atomic Energy Commission makes India’s thinking explicit; “It is India’s discretion from whom we should import nuclear reactors. It has to be from all members of the NSG with no strings, whatsoever, attached.” Kakodkar was reacting to reports that the deal will make India choosy about nuclear fuel sourcing, “No conditions should be laid and there is a need for clean, unconditional exemptions from NSG guidelines on the import of nuclear reactors”. The comment assumes importance as the NSG guidelines restrict the export of reactors by members of the grouping, including the US, France, Russia, Australia and Japan.

On the issue of possible US restrictions on nuclear tests by India, Kakodkar said, “India’s interests should be upheld in carrying out the strategic programme.” Welcoming the deal, Kakodakar maintained that the deal was a three-stage programme with adequate provisions to discuss non-interference by the US and India having a right to reprocess the spent fuel. On the rationale of such a deal, he said, “India is self-sufficient in the nuclear area, but we also have to pursue other alternatives.”

Sharing a thought of AEC, Kakodkar said, “Ultimately the Indian nuclear programme has to move away from uranium to thorium for producing energy. By 2050, nuclear energy will constitute 274,000 MW or 20 to 25 percent of India’s total power production.”

According to the AEC, even with an indigenous programme, a nuclear generation capacity of over 100,000 MW by 2040 and over 200,000 MW by 2050 is achievable, which will set the stage for a sustained growth based on the thorium cycle.

India’s installed nuclear power capacity is 4,120 MW, from 17 reactors constitute 3.2 percent of the total installed electrical capacity of 127,750 MW by the end of the Tenth Plan.

The projected electricity capacity by the end of the Eleventh Plan is about 195,000 MW, which means that the nuclear component (7,280 MW) will be 3.7 percent. By the end of the Twelfth Plan (2012-17) it will be 275,000 MW, of which the nuclear component will be 13,880 MW, which is about 5 percent.

The target set by the Department of Atomic Energy at the turn of the century for the year 2020 is 20,000 MW. This target can be achieved through imports only if the consortium of NSG countries agrees to relax the export guidelines following a successful Indo-US nuclear cooperation agreement.

Hyde Act
The Government is facing the criticism from within by taking the stand that Hyde Act is not binding on India and cannot materially control the Indo-US Agreement. The provisions of Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act, 1954 form the basis of the Indo-US Agreement. The Section 123 agreement defines the parameters for a country to qualify for the US assistance and cooperation in the nuclear field.

The Indo-US Agreement is a Congressional-Executive Agreement under the Hyde Act passed by Congress. The Hyde Act is construed as delimiting the President’s authority in implementing the nuclear agreement with India.

The Hyde Act exempts the proposed nuclear agreement with India from certain requirements of the US Atomic Energy Act, 1954. The Act requires the US Government to follow certain policies in the implementation of the agreement. The President needs to report to the Congress periodically, on the progress in the implementation of the cooperation and also any violations to the adherence in the restrictions laid on the transfer of nuclear material. It also has provisions for the termination of nuclear transfers to India and enforcement of accountability of the nuclear material supplied to it.

The Section 103(4) of the Hyde Act stipulates the President to secure India’s full and active participation in US efforts to dissuade, isolate and, if necessary, sanction and contain Iran for its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and capability to enrich uranium and so on.

On the outrage about Hyde Act in India, observers have to say that the advantages from the Indo-US nuclear agreement are too big to be thrown away because of an impressionist reading of the Hyde Act. The issue requires a deeper understanding of the position of the US President in relation to the Congress in the separation of powers and checks and balances enshrined in the US Constitution along with the complexities of nuclear technology.

Any evaluation of the Hyde Act must also take into account the inevitable gulf between legislative prescriptions of the Hyde Act and their expedient and practical implementation in the 40 year duration of the agreement.

Road Ahead
With India deciding to steer ahead with the deal, the 45-member club of NSG will now step in to kick-start the process of deliberations to decide whether India-specific amendments are to be made or a consensus made to facilitate nuclear trade with India.

It is expected that the amendments will be conforming to the principles of nuclear non-proliferation accepted internationally. Even China is supposed to take a friendly stand to the amendments despite a section of the official Chinese media voicing concerns about the civilian energy agreement, saying that it might undercut the global nuclear non-proliferation efforts.

Ronen Sen, India’s Ambassador to the United States, sums it up, “The nuclear agreement in no way undercuts the non-proliferation treaty.” According to him, the two countries have entered into a “new framework of cooperation” with ‘tangible benefits’ to both. He states explicitly, “We are not in violation of the NPT because we have never signed it, nor will we. But, we will never try to undermine it either”.

The whole debate about the nuclear deal is unveiling the emerging geo-political and strategic dimensions of the India-US detente. It will be interesting to watch India shed its coy idealistic inhibitions inherited from the Cold War era and prepare for a larger role in the realm of big-ticket global diplomacy.