A different kind of meltdown

It looks like the U.S.-India nuclear deal, that was greeted with such fanfare 2 years ago, is going to be put into cold storage until 2009, disappointing Americans who hoped for a new strategic partnership and demonstrating again that India is not ready for the world stage. PM Singh announced:

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India, even though he has forcefully staked his legacy on a landmark nuclear agreement with the United States, made it plain on Friday that his government would not invite early elections by confronting its Communist allies in Parliament over their opposition to the deal. “What we have done with the United States — it is an honorable deal, it is good for India, it is good for the world,” he said at a conference here. “I do attach importance in seeing this deal come through, but if it doesn’t come through that is not the end of life.”

Not ready for the world stage may seem a harsh assessment. After all, many critics of the deal pointed out that even if it did go through, the actual electricity generated would not meet India’s needs. Indian security experts (that were not reflexively anti-American) pointed out that they were uneasy about how involved America would be in setting Indian nuclear policy.

I do not dismiss those concerns out of hand, but the deal was something more – it was an acknowledgement of changing global realities. The. U.S. invested a lot into the deal, being criticized by the non-proliferation community as being reckless, by some paleo-cons as being too indulgent with India, etc. But it was, in a sense, a bet by the U.S. that India was going to take a bigger role on the world stage. America bet on the wrong horse.

By failing to get the Communists in line, PM Manmohan Singh has shown he is an incompetent who cannot get things done. Under his watch, there have been no major arrests in high profile terrorist attacks, such as the Bombay train blasts of 2006 or the recent blasts in Hyderabad. Naxalites have free reign over parts of rural India. In the immediate neighborhood – the Maoists are close to seizing control in Nepal, Bangladesh is under military rule, and Sri Lanka is looking to Pakistan for weapons to deal with the Tamil Tigers. Pakistan has been a better neighbor lately, but that may have to do with its preoccupation with internal matters than any new thinking on their part.

On the economic front, reforms have stalled. With millions of young workers entering the labor force every year, Singh has failed to enact labor market reforms that can make those jobs available. Instead, all Singh managed to do was threaten the private sector with caste quotas. All that will do is ensure that the private sector will be as wasteful and unproductive as India’s public sector.

On the education front, primary and secondary education are still woefully underfunded, with absentee teachers collecting money for classes that are not taught. Rather than deal with this, Singh offers to expand quotas at university level, and increase the acceptance rate – which is likely to lower standards.

By being adamant in their opposition to the deal, India’s Communists have blocked India from having access to Western technology that their paymasters in China already enjoy. Someone is popping champagne in Beijing, seeing their Indian puppets carry out their bidding with such effectiveness.

When Singh first became PM, it was thought that since he was not a career politician, he would not be as beholden to special interests. He’d handle the policy, and Sonia Gandhi would handle the politics. By not having any experience on how to keep parties in line, Singh was a poor choice for prime minister. Nitin Pai at The Acorn is calling for his resignation.

Am I over-reacting? I’d like some feedback from the India-based readers.

157 thoughts on “A different kind of meltdown

  1. Dhoni,

    I don’t think you have to resort to namecalling to make your point. Chachaji, KXB, Kush and others make their point respectfully and so far this has been a great exchange, I don’t think there is any need to make it a pissing match.

  2. Chachaji,I agree with you on the history of what went on in the UN. But where I disagree with you is that India somehow has to be admitted with Pakistan’s feelings taken into consideration. Pakistan, to be blunt, is not a big enough country to demand such an influence by itself. It has nothing to do with good or bad. Almost every country in the Security Council had tensions with some other country and were perceived as bullies by others when they were admitted. SO I do not see why Pakistan’s feelings should be considered for India’s eligibility. India’s size and form of government should be good enough to get it admitted regardless of whether it is being unfair to Pakistan or not. It is simply ridiculous for China to be the only non white permananent member. Indonesia has a large muslim population, but as a whole, it is still not that big of a country, and some might say it is in China’s sphere, to put it very loosely. I think there is a stronger case to include a prominent South American country. And at some point, if South Africa continues to improve and demonstrate long term stability in leadership, it should be the first representative from Africa.

    I do like the supermajority concept with 10 or so Permanent Members. 8 out of 10 sounds good. Or maybe they can come up with a mechanism to override a veto with a simple majority in the general membership and a supermajority in the permanent membership or some other formula including the permanent and temporary members of the Security Council.

  3. Pravin, I think the real issue to think about is what India intends to do with a Security Council seat – and what the world system would achieve by elevating India to such a position. To a large extent, India has wanted the psychological boost, the ‘recognition’, the righting of a wrong inflicted during colonial times, the ‘right’ of one-fifth of humanity, an ancient civilization, etc. Your argument is along these lines.

    But the world system will recognize it only if elevating it further buttresses and strengthens the system, or if it is so strong in its own right that not co-opting it runs the serious risk of severely disrupting it. The Pakistan issue figures as part of both these latter considerations – is the world system better if India is admitted to the SC without a resolution of the issue, or – does leaving India out increase the chance of something (like a nuclear exchange) which severely disrupts the system, at least locally and temporarily?

    I think the India-Pakistan issue should be resolved anyway, just from the local pov; but even from the world system pov – elevating a state which has such a long-standing and seemingly unresolvable existential conflict to a position where it is supposed to strengthen and buttress the system – can affect the perception (and reality) of the legitimacy of the system. Sure, Taiwan probably doesn’t like China in the P-5, (nor does India like the fact that China is in while it is out), and Ukraine and Poland probably don’t like that Russia is in. But the India-Pakistan thing goes deeper – there have been four hot wars, much overt hostility, long-continuing low-intensity (but bloody) conflict, and several near-nuclear exchanges. So it is in India’s own interest to resolve that, or concede that world-system intervention is necessary to resolve it (undercutting its claims to regional pre-eminence, and thus also to elevation in the SC).

    As I see it, India has now realized that it makes a lot of sense to work within the system and get the things it really wants – greater local and global security, better terms of trade, greater international labor mobility (e.g., more H-1B visas, and similar visas into the EU) etc, while also working toward recognition and elevation. As the guarantor-hegemon of the world system today, and the core of the largest contintentally integrated economy – the US is in a position to help India – both to achieve its larger geopolitical aims as well as the specific aim of ‘permanent membership’, but won’t do so unless it is fully convinced that India will be on its side both strategically and tactically, and for the long term.

    The nuclear deal formalizes that strategic understanding, and I fully expect that once that happens and fully gets going, India will eventually be accomodated as a ‘permanent’ member of the Security Council, along with others, though without a veto (like all others, including the current P-5), sometime in the next decade and half – perhaps around 2020. But the settlement with Pakistan also has to happen, and it is in India’s own interest to do that proactively, (and hopefully also evolve a strategic consensus with Pakistan, and claim that seat jointly).

    India is also working separately with Japan and Germany (who are its peers in GDP PPP, and whose formal elevation is expected to strengthen and buttress the world system); and with Brazil and South Africa (who, like itself, are representatives of regions neglected in the permanent membership) – both as something useful in itself, and as a way of advancing their respective cases for permanent membership.

  4. Dhoni, Please see my response to your “enlightening” comments. With communist sympathizers like you, we dont really need enemies !

    “FYI, it was the British Empire that empowered the wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. You must be one of the few people who didnt see the movie Lawrence of Arabia. T. E. Lawrence, great hero of the Empire, can be considered the father of modern terrorism. The British Empire was founded on theft, genocide, piracy, drug running etc. “

    Dhoni, why dont you stop living in a time warp ? What will make people like you to stop living in the 19th century? Who cares what the Brits did in 1904 ?? It doesnt wash away the fact the Saudis gave the world Wahabbist idealogy.

    “And the U.S. has continued the support of wahhabis. Bin Laden and his ilk were called freedom fighters by Reagan when they were fighting the Soviet Union, and wahhabi Saudi Arabia which finances all these jihadi producing madrassas worldwide is a long term american ally.”

    Now they are repenting for that support – the 9/11 attacks have put all these policies under a very harsh light. Is it possible for a country to recover from its mistakes or do we just keep condemning it for ever ?

    “You, KXB, chachaji et al obviously do not really believe this (correctly). Which is why you are so desperate to make India a subservient tool of the powerful anglosphere.”

    Yeah and you have the special knowledge about how we are going to become a subservient tool, dont you ? Inferiority complex is’nt going to help arguments, does it??

    “will be repercussions if this deal is not going to come through. Some of it will be in the form of FDI. But most importantly it will be in the arena of trustworthiness Sheer cravenness and cluelessness. China gets multiple times the FDI that India gets without signing such deals.”

    Cravenness ?? Cluelessness? Who the hell is craven to who ?? Do you know how much work was put into the deal and to come to this point ? Every one here in the US is admonishing the US Govt for giving into India , while you call us being craven to the US !! If any one needs to get a clue it is people like you.

    “Laughably stupid. You are making a point against yourself. Its nuclear energy that is far more dependent on India’s ‘woeful power transmission and distribution’ infrastructure. Solar energy can be independent of India’s decrepit infrastructure; it can scale from powering tiny electronics to entire cities and solar panels can be mass produced far more easily than nuclear power plants.”

    Hmmm… Is it possible that we can get our power systems and grids to operate more efficiently or have you totally lost faith on India to do such a thing.? Is it possible to privatize the system, get Government hands off the whole thing and reduce inefficiencies ?? Is it possible that the nuclear power plants springing up a blessing to kick start our power systems being reformed ??

    Who in the world has demonstrated the great extent to which you claim that solar energy can scale ?? Can you please give concrete examples of entire cities being powered by solar energy ?? You are welcome to live in your fantasy lands, just dont ask other people to join you.

    “The U.S. was forced into liberating a large percentage of its own people from long term tyranny (african-americans and other coloreds including desis) because of the moral pressure applied by communists during the Cold War. Thank the commies for the fact that your colored ass is even allowed to immigrate here.”

    Moral pressure applied by the commies ?? If i have ever heard of a bigger joke about the morality of communism, this has to be it !!! You have no idea in hell of how many people here in the US have fought for equal civil liberties for people of all colors. They were’nt communists, not by any stretch of imagination !!

    Communism is anithetical to basic human freedoms and individual liberty – it is laughable to even think that communists applied “moral pressure” to the US. Try telling this to East European countries like Poland, Romania, Hungary who suffered under Soviet Communism !! Try telling this to the millions of Russians who were sent to the gulags by Stalin and the millions of Chinese who were killed by Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”.

    Such love for communism gets my blood boiling. And dont you dare to pass racist comments and get away scott free. I am not an immigrant and my colored ass is here because of my merits , not because of your F**KED UP communists !!

  5. The U.S. was forced into liberating a large percentage of its own people from long term tyranny (african-americans and other coloreds including desis) because of the moral pressure applied by communists during the Cold War. Thank the commies for the fact that your colored ass is even allowed to immigrate here.

    One of your more absurd statements, and it is hard to pick just one. Ask the Georgians, Armenians, Ukranians, Poles, Romanians how the communists dealt with ethnic differences. Secondly, communists were pressuring the U.S. into allowing immigrants? Wouldn’t it make more sense for the Soviet Union to have allowed immigration into its own region from the developing world, if it wanted to win the battle of public opinion? Then again, if you had the misfortune of living in say, East Berlin, and decided to make a better life for yourself by fleeing to the west – your wishes were greeting by a few shots from a Kalishnikov fired into your back.

  6. c’mon people. dhoni is a handle that comes from the same illustrious brain that brought us doordarshan and prema, recycling the same tired tropes over and over again with the same kind of vicious language guaranteed to get under people’s skins and generate useless comment chains. can we please stop feeding the troll?