PRAGOTI

A letter from Dipanjan Guha

The past few weeks in India were full of political dynamics and noises about the trust vote for the Indo-US nuclear deal – supports withdrawn and extended, pledges made and broken, leaders meeting leaders, semi-leaders meeting semi-leaders, TV channels feasting and scavenging on anything about the topic that they could focus their cameras on, experts (or otherwise) speaking from different points of view and a lot of the Indians watching failing to resist the temptation to watch this drama. I am sure a lot of things happened in the background also which can only be guessed. I know most of us are very distant from and uninterested in ‘politics’ but somehow political decisions come back again and again to determine a number of factors in our life – whether the fuel price will increase or there will be more subsidies, whether interest rates will increase, whether the tax structure will change, etc. So sometimes it seems that an interest and awareness about political activities is useful as I will have to follow the decisions and the policies being made by the government. The just-concluded trust vote, the build-up to a climax and the concentration of events in a short span of time have actually got many Indians to rise from their normal state of slumber and take notice of the happenings, albeit out of fun and excitement. I feel this in itself is a positive outcome of the past three weeks. And I will take the advantage of this situation to pen down a few observations that I have and hope that the excitement of the time has left some residual interest in my friends to read through this write-up.

I will speak about only one aspect of the whole thing – not the deal, but the Trust Vote and the features of our democracy that have come out. I will keep the merits of the deal itself out of this discussion and try to be objective about how the trust vote was held and won, which is my point of discussion. The nuclear deal was not in the Common Minimum Program (CMP) of the government, which was supposed to be the guiding document for the government policies as it was formed and supported by multiple parties with varied and often conflicting programs. The deal was fiercely opposed by the left parties, consistently from the beginning. The vast majority of the countrymen knew (and still know) very little of the implications of the deal. The scientific community of the country is well divided about the issue. USA debated about the deal in their country for a long time and even formulated a domestic law (the Hyde Act) which is supposed to bind USA in their dealings with India in civil nuclear exchange and which probably will override the bipartite 1-2-3 agreement in guiding the US government in case of a crisis. They decided to move into the deal only after being sure of their gains but in India the debate was hardly even opened in any domain, let aside a law being formulated. So, there should have been enough confusion in a democratic government in moving ahead with the deal. But the Congress government, led by Manmohan Singh showed a kind of urgency about the nuclear deal, uncharacteristic of any government institution of India.

The support in the parliament was required and subsequently received. To begin discussion about the numbers, it is essential information that the UPA had 222 MPs and 50 more were required for a majority in the trust vote. The Samajwadi Party pledged to support the government on the deal, though it was strongly opposed to it even three months back. So, what happened in these three months for them to reverse their stand? Well, the party said that it suddenly perceived the desirabilityof the deal because of the support of the ex-president Dr. Abdul Kalam. But Dr. Kalam has actually been speaking for the deal for the past one year and not for the last three months. So, probably the reason for SP’s volte face lay elsewhere. Congress is quite weak in UP now. So, SP’s poll prospects in UP will not change dramatically with this alignment. There probably was some other deal that Congress struck with the SP (easing the corruption cases against Mulayam?). Whatever the deal was, that it has nothing to do with the nuclear deal and the nuclear policy is certain. SP had 39 MPs but its leader Amar Singh proudly announced that he would bring about 41 MPs! How?

JMM, led by ‘guruji’ Shibu Soren came next. Even with SP’s support, the government was far from safe (especially as SP lost a few MPs on this issue by counter-poaching!). At this point the old friend of Congress entered the scene. JMM MPs including their leader Shibu Soren earlier voted to save the minority Narasimha Rao-led Congress government in 1993 after taking bribes. It must be easy to strike a deal with them – Congress leaders of that time are still around, Sonia Gandhi, Pranab Mukherjee, Manmohan Singh, etc. So, why not! And a deal was struck. Shibu Soren, who lost his ministry two years back after being found guilty in a murder case (and recently acquitted), announced publicly that he and his party MPs (4 in total) would vote for the government as they have been assured of a cabinet berth (for Shibu Soren) and another slot as a minister of state. We are not told if anything else has been offered to the JMM MPs but Congress struck a deal with JMM, which had nothing to do with the nuclear deal and policy, but because of which JMM would vote for the nuclear deal.

Even after this, the support situation of the government was still shaky and each vote counted in a precariously poised parliament. Then came deals with individual MPs for their support. Dawa Narbula, the Congress MP from Darjeeling was told by the GJMM (Gorkha Janmukti Morcha) leader Bimal Gurung that if the MP would vote for the government without getting an assurance of a separate Gorkhaland state, then he would not be allowed to enter the hills again. We know GJMM is really powerful in the Darjeeling hills now and Bimal Gurung is THE leader there with the single-point agenda of a separate Gorkhaland. Dawa Narbula did vote for the government and the day after the trust vote, Bimal Gurung sent a congratulatory note to the Congress president Sonia Gandhi. So an assurance of some sort of a separate Gorkhaland was probably given to the Darjeeling MP, another deal to secure another vote for the Indo-US nuclear deal. The Bodoland MP from Assam demanded that all his demands regarding Bodoland have to be accepted by the government to get his vote. The MP from Greater Manipur constituency demanded that a separate area for Nagas have to be built within the state of Manipur. We don’t know what deals were struck with them but they both voted for the government.

There were 10 cross votes – that is 10 MPs who were supposed to vote one way till the final day actually went the other way. ALL 10 went for the government! I don’t know what deals were offered to them. The government won 275-256. Had the cross votes not occurred, the government would have lost 265-266, even after all the deals we have talked about above.

I will not write anything about the morality of convicted criminal MPs (not under-trials, but those convicted on murder charges!) being brought out to vote for the government (I think a couple were brought out to vote against the government as well) or the show of cash in the parliament, which were allegedly offered to 3 opposition MPs to abstain from voting. But it is worth mentioning that the name of Sonia Gandhi’s advisor Ahmed Patel has directly been involved in the allegations. The allegation can be true or false; only time will tell (or perhaps it will not).

So, after making a number of deals none of which had anything to do with the merit of the Nuclear Deal, the Congress-led government managed to gather 275 MPs and won the ‘vote’ on the nuclear deal. But I am not sure about the ‘trust’ part. Congress has actually never lost a trust vote, even when in minority. It seems to be a core competency of the party! The supposedly ‘clean’ prime minister certainly knew about and approved all the mini deals struck to win the ‘trust’ vote. He looked relaxed and flashed a victory sign while entering the parliament on 21st July before the beginning of the 2-day special session of the parliament for the trust vote.

The only goal of this write-up is to put forward a few facts that I have observed myself during this test of our democracy. I am afraid that many more deals were struck behind the scenes. I don’t know how the Indian corporate and the US corporate worked during this time. But whatever was visible to plain eyesight is enough to make a point. Dear friend, you can ask what’s new about it. Perhaps not much, but the concentration of events in a short period of time helps to bring out the reality with more ease. I believe the Nuclear deal was perhaps anyway on, because even if the government fell and a new government came under BJP, they would implement the deal with more enthusiasm (L K Advani clearly stated during his trust vote speech that BJP is not against the deal but they would renegotiate) and of course USA would be interested in doing this because though India’s gains out of the deal are highly in doubt, USA’s are not. But the ‘trust’ vote brought out clearly and even to laymen like us the state of our democracy and morality. It is worth taking a note (and better still, a stand) before the events get lost in the flow of our polity.

Cheers,
Dipan

PS:
Though I had a few things to say about the deal itself, I will not do that here, but just mention that with Iraq and Afghanistan still burning, I am not very comfortable with US inspectors coming into my country to ‘inspect’ and ‘report’ and take action on the basis of that. We know that Iraq was attacked on the basis of ‘reports’ of the country possessing WMDs! I am also not very comfortable with US warships moving around just south of the Digha coast on the Bay of Bengal and I will be sad if India sends troops to Iran or vote for an attack on Iran (I am not really sure these will happen, and the deal perhaps doesn’t have anything directly to these effects, but you know, ‘strategic ally’ of USA!). Lastly I am not really very comfortable with a lot of radioactive materials lying in my country (it is worth mentioning that the US and UK, although desperate for fuel, have never considered nuclear energy as an option, precisely because of the hazardous nature of the waste). I will not say anything more about the deal here, but will postpone the issue for a later date.