Geopolitical Analysis

(See ‘Nuke deal and understatements‘ on Geopolitical Analysis).

By Maharaj K.Kaul

It was with disbelief that I read in Prof. Pandita’s article ‘Nuke Deal and Understatements’, that Indian communists are afraid of India becoming prosperous because they will lose their constituency!

Kerala, the first state where communists came to power in India in 1957, today stands ahead of all the Indian states in Human Development Index with life expectancy at birth at 75 years and infant mortality at 12 per 1000 live births. The rest of India, most of which is not ruled by comrades, falls far behind with the corresponding figures at 64 years and 54 per 1000! And Kerala is almost 100 literate when the corresponding figure for India is around 64! And yet, Prof. Pandita accuses the comrades of being against prosperity! 

The implication in Prof. Pandita’s article also is that prosperity in India is around the corner. Nothing can be farther from the truth because prosperity in India is decades away unless one is only concerned with the top 20 to 30 per cent of the population. All one has to do is to look at numbers, government statistics, rather than be carried away by the ’shining India’ slogans of the right-wing BJP.  

On August 8, 2007 National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector presented a report to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in Unorganized Sector. The report brings out the shocking condition of 395 million workers of India employed in areas such as agriculture, construction, weaving and fishing, 77% of whom (supporting a population of 836 million people) live at less than Rs 20 (or half a dollar) per day! The comrades are the only ones who feel incensed by “shining India’s” callous disregard for such poverty. It is the comrades who, successfully, used their power with the current ruling coalition by forcing the UPA government to push through the national Rural Employment Guarantee Act which provides employment to many rural households for at least 100 days in a year to alleviate poverty. They should be commended for making meaningful attempts to get this mass of Indian population out of the grinding poverty that the statistics reveals, and not accused of things which do not stand up to scrutiny.

Prof. Pandita seems to be reading too much into the nuclear-deal transforming India’s economy and thus leading it into prosperity. There is no doubt that the nuclear deal has a tremendous geo-political significance for India. But its benefit to India lies more in the strategic political areas than in generating electricity. Here is the energy picture of India that I am presenting for better understanding of the energy issue.

India’s present consumption of power is about 500 Watts per capita which is 1/20th of that in the US. We can’t set the US as a model of a prosperous country because it is a very wasteful country. But I would venture to say that, to be prosperous, India would have to increase its power production not twenty-fold to reach the US level but ten fold – to 5,000 Watts per capita or 5 million MW for a population of one billion. One nuclear plant would add about 1,000 MW at a cost of about $5 billion, and would take at least five, possibly seven years to bring into operation. On the contrary, Iran-India gas pipeline will cost $7 billion, would take 3 to 5 years to complete and provide 30,000 MW (equivalent of 30 nuclear power plants) during the first year, rising during the later years to meet India’s demands. Developing the Brahmputra river region (in eastern India) for hydropower alone would yield a potential power generation capacity of 150 nuclear plants, though that would take a long time to complete. And then, of course, we have unlimited supply of coal which could be turned into reasonably clean fuel if we teamed up with South African company SASOL, the leader in getting oil-from-coal technology. The foreign exchange involved in these projects is an important but a separate issue altogether.

In view of these options, there is a lot of hype in emphasizing that the nuclear deal will rescue an energy starved India. It will help, but it is not that critical to India’s development as it is made out to be.

Prof. Pandita also links up the nuclear deal with 9/11 and Muslim vote bank. This is a fallacious argument too, since the Muslim vote bank is considered to be more important to the Congress party, which worked hard on the nuclear deal to bring it into its final shape, than to the comrades. Even the term Muslim vote bank is a bad characterisation on India’s voting pattern which then should also have a Hindu vote bank, a Christian vote bank and many caste-based vote banks. An analysis of these vote-banks would be a separate essay in itself.

One can be critical of CPI-M and other comrades for their opposition to the nuclear deal but one doesn’t have to do so by bringing up accusations that have no basis in reality. What the comrades are wary of is the fear that the deal makes India’s sovereignty vulnerable to an imperialist US. The comrades are not alone in making this allegation; the right wing BJP party is also opposed to the deal on identical grounds. There may be an element of truth to it but considering the overall impact of the deal, the deal’s benefits outweigh its perceived harm.

As to the much maligned Indian comrades, here is what Vir Singhvi, Editor of Hindustan Times, and no comrade himself, writes in his August 18 editorial, in which he criticises the comrades for their opposition to the nuclear deal but gives them credit for possessing many virtues desirable in a political party.

“The Indian middle class never really embraced communism as a guiding ideology … but it has always treated Left parties and their leaders with a respect that sometimes borders on admiration…

“ … Much of the Left’s standing comes from the perception that its members are men – and women – of integrity and principle. All parties shelter the odd crook but both the CPI and the CPM are seen as being largely free of the corruption that plagues the Indian political system. Moreover, the Left (outside of Bengal and Kerala) is the only grouping that doesn’t seem to care about power. Men like Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury would have shone in government. Yet they have consciously opted for political careers that will keep them out of office. When power has been offered to the CPM at the Centre, it has actually turned it down … ”

What Vir Singhvi considers a virtue in the comrades who have not been tempted by political power, Prof. Pandita sadly considers opportunism. But I tend to agree with Mr. Singhvi. He further writes in the same editorial:

“It is the respect that educated Indians have for the Left’s leaders that has allowed the communist parties to fend off the traditional right-wing smears: that the CPI played no role in the freedom struggle; that it continued to take orders from the Kremlin till the CPSU collapsed; and that the CPM was set up by disaffected CPI members who wanted to support China rather than India during the 1962 War.”

The comrades may be wrong on the nuclear issue but, unlike other political parties, they have the well-being of overwhelming section of India at heart. The sad part of Left’s opposition to the deal is that if it fails to be consummated because of their opposition, the only winners are going to be back-stabbing treacherous China and the violence-prone fundamentalist reactionary Pakistan both, to India’s misfortune, in her neighborhood. India’s left, would in that eventuality, bear the burden of having objectively betrayed the long term interest of India as much as the right-wing BJP which, unlike the left, did not even fight for India’s freedom from the British and was willing to mortgage it to the imperialist US ever since they became a national party.

Another fallacious, but very widespread, argument is that America is opposed to Islamic theo-fascism. Just because President Bush and other US administration officials keep on harping on this falsehood does not make it a fact. And just because 9/11 made the US a victim of this theo-fascism does not imply that the US is waging a war against these fascists. One shouldn’t forget the fact that the US is the creator of this monster. The three countries which created Islamic theo-fascism (the Wahabi variety) are the US, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during their jehad against a progressive Afghanistan. They are still allies. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Adviser, boasted of provoking the Soviets by starting Mujahideen war in Afghanistan in July 1979, six months before Soviets sent their troops in. When interviewed by Le Nouvel Observateur (France), [Jan 15-21, 1998, p. 76], and  asked whether he regretted having supported the Islamic fundamentalism and given arms and advice to future terrorists, he replied:

“What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”

I think we should keep that in mind when we think of the role of the US in world vis-à-vis terrorism. The truth lies more in the deed than in the word. The role of the US in creating Islamic terrorism did not stop after Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. In 1999 they teamed up Kosovo Liberation Army, another terrorist outfit (who financed their operations by selling drugs in Europe) in their invasion of Yugoslavia. Iraq was one of the few secular countries in the Arab World and with its invasion and occupation by the US, this unfortunate country too has joined the camp of theo-fascists too. So where is United States’ commitment of fighting Islamic terrorists?

India has been the biggest victim of Islamic terrorism and yet has received very little support from the US in combating this menace.  Islamic theo-fascism will not be defeated until US pulls the rug from under Pakistan’s and Saudi Arabia’s theocratic dictatorships. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen in the near future.