08-19-2007, 10:45 PM
The Washington Post article is full of praise for India and it is rather nice to hear such things .
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The Model That India Offers
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, August 19, 2007; B07
India celebrated its 60th birthday last week with a raucous parliamentary debate over nuclear energy and its new strategic relationship with the United States. New Delhi had the air of the capital of an emerging world power looking ahead into a promising, if complicated, future.
Pakistan marked the same occasion by sinking deeper into the past. The corrupt backroom dealing between military rulers and politicians that has produced a cycle of disasters for the Pakistani nation resumed -- aided by the hidden hand of U.S. diplomacy working to preserve President Pervez Musharraf's dwindling power in Islamabad.
The anniversary of the partition of the Asian subcontinent six decades ago showed the region's two contrasting faces: a giant, open democracy and a sclerotic but nuclear-armed garrison state. It also revealed two contrasting faces of the Bush administration's foreign policy, where pockets of bold thinking about the future compete with the need for short-term fixes that rely heavily on illusion.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh defended the nuclear accord against a barrage of attacks from the communist left and the reactionary Hindu right, keeping alive Bush administration hopes that the president can finally translate unconventional thinking in foreign policy into a substantial achievement.
The accord underpins a transformed U.S.-India relationship that is essential to the struggle against transnational jihadist terrorism. It sets the stage for a badly needed reframing of the global nuclear nonproliferation agreements and practices that failed to stop Pakistan from becoming the world's nuclear Wal-Mart. And it is a key to hopes for a more effective international approach to the real dangers of global warming.
Singh does not need parliamentary approval of the deal, which will open the way for the United States and other nations to sell nuclear reactors and fuel to India for peaceful purposes. If he survives a vote of no confidence, as expected, Singh will put the accord into effect once the U.S. Congress approves its final details later this year. Such approval in Bush's twilight months will represent a rare triumph, which has been shepherded along by Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns and other forward-looking officials.
But that is only half the anniversary story. Pakistan at 60 represents failure, both for itself and for U.S. diplomacy, as starkly as India represents the promise of success on both counts.
Successive Pakistani military regimes have ousted corrupt and ineffective politicians, feathered their own nests for as long as they could, and then turned the shambolic states of affairs they have created over to unreformed politicians, starting the cycle all over again. The implicit deal was that neither side would implement fundamental change in the deeply fractured society they ruled.
When he took power in 1999, Musharraf seemed capable of breaking the pattern. Less corrupt, far more agile and a great deal smarter than previous military rulers, the general was not an unappealing alternative to the civilians he displaced. His periodic peaceful overtures to India seemed more genuine than anything accomplished by elected prime ministers such as Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.
Musharraf self-destructed despite -- or perhaps because of -- the windfall of U.S. aid that poured in after Sept. 11, 2001. He received kid-gloves treatment from Washington even as he failed crucial tests on punishing his country's globally destabilizing nuclear proliferation and eliminating al-Qaeda, Taliban and Kashmiri terrorist bases that are aided by his intelligence service. The civilian population is effectively in revolt against Musharraf.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her aides have reportedly urged him to pursue secret negotiations with Bhutto to schedule elections and share power with her. But if restoring Bhutto to power is part of the solution, the problem may well be insoluble. That ploy is a return to the broken record of the past, a triumph of desperation over experience.
Hitting dead end in Pakistan did not just happen. It is the result of consistent U.S. decisions to apply short-term solutions to one of the world's most serious long-term problems. To curry favor with China, to spite India's notoriously prickly leaders, to bleed Soviet forces in Afghanistan or for many other immediate purposes, Washington has alternately indulged, bribed or ignored Pakistan's leaders and their society's deep-rooted problems.
The new U.S. relationship with India offers much for the future -- including a model for dealing with a South Asian nation just turning 60 by seeking imaginative long-term change instead of pursuing traditional stopgaps to get through the latest crisis.
jimhoagland@washpost.com
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It has highlighted the contrast between India and Pakistan as they cross over to the 61st year. There is nothing new about the facts mentioned in the article except that his prediction and analysis about President Bushâs Foreign Policy has some originality.
Back here in Delhi, it appears that the Left and the BJP have increased their pressure on the Government. Although, voting in Parliament on this issue is not required, yet a debate on the issue will be in the fitness of things as we in India do have a Parliamentary form of Government responsible to the Parliament. I donât expect that the House will go against the Nuclear Deal , provided it has all the safeguards for India , particularly the right to carry on future tests , if need be. In the run up to the general elections which is still two years away, some of the political parties want to make some noise on this issue to remind the people at large that they are on their job.
The following is the latest from the Left Parties :-
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New Delhi: This is the text of the CPI(M) Polit Bureau resolution.
The Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) met in New Delhi on August 17 and 18, 2007. It unanimously adopted the following resolution:
The Polit Bureau of the CPI (M) fully endorsed the stand taken by the Left parties on the bilateral agreement on nuclear cooperation with the United States. The statement of the Left parties has set out comprehensively the reasons why the agreement is not acceptable.
The agreement should be seen in the light of the Hyde Act passed by the U.S. Congress and in the context of the wider implications of India being bound into a strategic alliance with the United States and its adverse consequences for an independent foreign policy, sovereignty and the economic interests of the people. The Polit Bureau is of the firm opinion that going ahead with this agreement will not serve Indiaâs interests.
Given the widespread opposition to the agreement and the fact that a majority in Parliament do not support the nuclear cooperation deal, the government should not proceed further with the agreement.
Till all the objections are considered and the implications of the Hyde Act evaluated, the government should not take the next step with regard to negotiating a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is for the Congress leadership to decide on the matter which will have serious consequences for the government and the country.
The Polit Bureau decided to take the issue of the nuclear agreement and the dangers of the strategic alliance with the United States to the people through a nationwide mass campaign. The parties will be meeting soon to discuss all other related matters.
© Copyright 2000 - 2006 The Hindu
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You will agree that he demand made in the resolution is nothing unreasonable in a democratic set up and therefore, we should all expect a lively debate and examination of the issue in Parliament. In the heat of the Nuclear Deal , many of us have perhaps not given due importance to the fact that closer interaction with USA may bring in some problems for India militarily on a future date. Given the recent track record of the USA in Iraq, this aspect also needs to be closely examined from Indiaâ s own angle in the emerging world order.