Editorial for BP
THE INDO US CIVIL NUCLEAR AGREEMENT 123
Even the Information Technology and software sector requires large quantities of power for its data centers and the 24 hr working BPO and KPO and ITES businesses. 75% of India’s oil and gas needs are being imported. The rising prices of crude oil place a great burden upon our foreign exchange earnings. Our imports of oil and oil products are amounting to over Rs.2,80,000 crores and this amount would go up and not go down. Our hydro electrical power generating capacity is not increasing and the control of Tibet which is the source of our major rivers by not very friendly China and its increasing influence on Nepal and possibly Bhutan would put a severe limit on the availability of hydro power. The only alternatives are is solar and nuclear power.
For solar power to be extensively developed and for it to become cost-effective would take quite some time and it requires large solar cell fabricating units, a small beginning only of which we are now making. Nuclear power is a proven source. It is clean. We are having an installed capacity of about 9000 mega watts of nuclear power. If constitutes only about 2.5% of our generating capacity. They are working at about 35% of capacity for want of nuclear fuel. Our development of fast breed reactors is still incomplete. France, produces 78% of its power from nuclear reactors; the average European Union is about 67%. Canada, Japan USA and Italy and UK which stopped construction of nuclear power plants about 25 years ago have resumed them because of this sky rocketing oil prices.
Energy security for India can be guaranteed only by resorting to nuclear power production. Even if we conclude the Agreement it will not be before 7 to 10 years for considerable amount of nuclear energy supplies within India. In spite of this grave situation, the conclusion of the civil nuclear cooperation agreement with USA is being delayed merely because of the opposition of various communist parties and their hangers-on ‘left’ parties. Communist parties in India are pathologically against the interests of India. The have a historical and unbroken record of opposing everything that builds up a prosperous, indivisible, powerful and intellectual India. The most notorious and unrepented anti-Indian actions of the communist parties are to mention but a few; their support for division of India to create Islamic Pakistan [and Bangladesh], their opposition to, Quit India movement and collaboration with the British; their waging a war against newly Independent India, 1947 51 characterising India as a stooge of Anglo-Indian imperialism., their finding fault with India and not China for that country’s war and aggression in 1962, support by one powerful communist party to the infamous fascist Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi in 1975 and their denunciation of every nuclear test [Pokhran I and II] by India and the country’s plans for a Chandrayan, but at the same time development of nuclear missile capacity and space programs by a hostile neighbour. The communist movement is over 80 years old in our country. The only growth it witnessed was the same party becoming about eight parities but with its popular vote for all these years at about 6% to 7 % and that too only in West Bengal and Tripura for into which infiltration of Bangladeshi Muslims is facilitated by their governments for enlistment of them as bonded voters and some times in Kerala. Is it not strange that this stunted party is able to hold the total country to ransom? This is because the power-hungry Dynasty-based leadership of the Congress is wanting to stay in power; no matter what happens to the country’s security of whether its borders or its energy or of its defence. The communist parties which are surely aware that their mentor country has signed the same 123 Nuclear Agreement with America, are opposing India’s signing that agreement and operationalising it. They are so strident to keep India power and energy poor but are ever so silent on the claims of their mentor country for parts of Arunachal Pradesh and even Sikkim. That these serve a foreign country’s interest is evident. They advocate maximum autonomy to Muslim majority Kashmir, but they denounce that demand by Tibetans in the country of their mentors. They support Palestinian claims against Israel and right of refugees to return but they are dead silent about the 300,000 Kashmiri pandits ethnically cleansed out of Kashmir Valley within in India. Is it not strange that Congress (I) is bending head over shoulders to get endorsement of such communist parties for the Indo-US nuclear deal but is irrationally and inexplicably refraining from seeking support of the truly national party, namely the BJP which has five times the popular vote than the communists? It appears that non-Indian interests are in alliance – one seeking for Dynasty and other for serving the interests not of India but its adversary.
Russia has always been a friend of India, no matter it was communist or is not. It is urging India to signing the Indo-US agreement. Many other democracies in the West [France, UK and Germany] and East [Japan and Australia] would like Indo-US Nuclear Agreement. Communists are false when they say that the Agreement might come in the way of India’s freedom to test nuclear weapons. How deceitful these are! They condemned India’s nuclear tests and now they are saying that our freedom to test will be jeopardized by this Agreement. They characterise the US’s eagerness to conclude the agreement, as that country’s greed to supply fuel as well as nuclear reactors to India. This is again totally false, because Russia and France perhaps, even China would like to sell not only fuel but nuclear reactors to India.
The attitude of the BJP is ambivalent and more of political adversarial reason than substance. It is BJP which warmed up to USA and also to Israel so that they will become our strategic allies against nuclear blackmailers and traditionally hostile powers on our borders. It is true that the terms of the agreement could be substantially better but that cannot be the reason for not clinching this agreement. If only Congress acts in the national interest and not in the interest of the party or dynasty, there could have been an agreed position involving the two major parties in India with respect this Agreement. Indeed patriotism and national interest must bring the two truly all-India parties to ignore the non-Indian parties with their roots not in India but elsewhere. As importantly, the casteist, propriety and regional parties who are more interested in ‘milking’ the Union Government’s money –cow rather than securing the defence, strength, unity and integrity of India, must be taught to realize that without a strong, united India, the regions, states could not prosper. Truly patriotic and nationalist and responsible Indian parties and intellectuals must prevail to see that this opportunity which has been opened for good and strategic relations between India and US especially in the matter of energy security, should not be shut. The communist cacophony and bluff must be contemptuously ignored and they should be shown as wreckers of powerful and prosperous and secure India.