• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
India’s interests are safe evenminus deal
BrahmaChellaney
October 20, 2007
Now that the vaunted US-India nuclear deal has seemingly runaground, one can dispassionately revisit a central question: Was it intended primarily to be an energy deal or a strategic deal? Knowingthat can help answer an oft-asked query: What would be the price of  failure for India?The costs, notional or otherwise, can relate only to what India will not get if the deal were to irretrievably collapse. The price of breakdownof a strategically anchored deal would include opportunity costs andthus would be greater than an accord designed merely to allow Indiato boost its nuclear-generatedelectricitythrough reactor imports.Even though the July 18, 2005, deal was embedded in a largerstrategic framework - with the nuclear-related portion constitutingonly four paragraphs in a long joint statement - Prime MinisterManmohan Singh sought to sell the accord as principally anarrangement to help meet India's burgeoning energy needs. ThePM's continual energy-deal spiel contrasted starkly with the deal'sportrayal by the Bush administration as a means to advancestrategic and commercialobjectives.Let us assume the deal incorporates both energy and strategicelements. Would a failed deal stall momentum in US-India relations?And would India's energy interests be adversely affected by the dealunravelling?Any objective appraisal will show that even without the deal, the US-India relationship is set toward closer engagement. That geopoliticaldirection was established long before the deal was initialled. The
 
mistake was to politically over-invest in the deal, going to the extent of meretriciously presenting it as the centrepiece of an emergingIndo-US strategic partnership. Any major relationship cannot affordto rise and fall on the strengthof a single issue.A strategic partnership with the United States, clearly, will aid Indianinterests. But New Delhi seriously erred on three counts: (i) inagreeing to terms of civil nuclear cooperation that are overtlyrestrictive and put the recipient at the mercy of the supplier; (ii) inexaggerating the role of high-priced, foreign fuel-dependent reactors from overseas to meet India's energy needs; and (iii) inpresenting the deal in bloated dimensions.However well-intentioned, a deal limited to one narrow area -commercial nuclear power - can hardly serve as a suitable framework to build a broad-based, enduring partnership. In fact,depicting the deal as a central element, if not the touchstone, of theIndo-US partnership only seemed to suggest that the base for such arelationshipis still too small.Even if the deal had smoothly come into force by now, India wouldstill have faced a wide array of US-inspired technology controls. TheNext Steps in Strategic Partnership(NSSP) initiative was designed tohelp ease US controls on the export of high-technology goods toIndia, and to permit civilian space and nuclear commerce. Thesethree areas wereknown as the "trinity."Instead of seeking a broad deal to cover all the "trinity" issues, Indiasettled for an arrangement in just one area where the US has a lot togain. The US is not only seeking to resuscitate its nuclear-powerindustry through exports to India, but also has managed to link civilnuclear cooperation to New Delhi's purchase of major Americanweapon systems. For the US, with major interests at stake, the dealtoday is more important than Singh's political survival. As theWashington Post reported last Tuesday, deeply disappointed USofficials have "scrambled"to "try to revive the deal."Shouldn't New Delhi have tested the US intent to forge a long-termpartnership by insisting on a deal that helped relax the entirepanoply of technology controls? In fact, had the US been keen to
 
remove the disadvantage India faces vis-Ã -vis China in accessinghigh-tech items in the American market, it would have delivered onthe other "trinity" areas - high-technology and civilian spacecooperation - instead of settling for a deal limited to an area holdingthe least benefit for India.Tellingly, while civil nuclear cooperation has required a change inAmerican law, a so-called 123 Agreement and a wished-forexemption from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, opening civilian spaceand high-technology cooperation merely demanded US executiveaction. By elastically interpreting existing US law and applying toIndia the same standards it does to Israel, Washington could haveopened the doorsto civilian space and high-technologycooperation.Instead, the US Congress has unreasonably cross-linked its actionon civil nuclear cooperation to the continuance of US export controlsagainst New Delhi in another "trinity" area, with the Hyde Act stipulating that the US missile sanctions law (which prohibits dual-use space exports) will still apply to India even after it "unilaterallyadheres" to the US-led Missile TechnologyControl Regime.Now let us turn to the other question, whether the deal's possiblecollapse wouldunfavourablyimpinge on India's energyinterests.Make no mistake: Sinking billions of dollars in importing reactorsneither makes economic sense nor can help significantly raise thepresent tiny share of nuclear power in India's total electricity supply.Nuclear plants are not just hugely expensive to build; independent studies worldwide show that electricity generated through currentlyavailable nuclear technologies is not cost-competitive with otherenergy sources.Take India's own case. The tariffs for power from all the indigenousnuclear plants completed in the past decade - at Kaiga, Rajasthan 3& 4, and Tarapur 3 & 4 -are in the high range of 270 to 285 paise perkilowatt hour. The price of power from the two Russian reactorsunder constructionsince 2002 at Kundakulam will be even higher-at least 290 paise per kWh, according to a Department of AtomicEnergy (DAE) estimate. In comparison, new mega thermal powerprojects have been approved by the government with electricity
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...