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Nuclear Deal good for which India?
 The Indian
sub-continent has many
Indias. The
Indian face to be shown as a bride to be is the neo-urban India.
The real face of poverty, the snake charmers and the dying farmers
of Punjab who provide the bread basket to Indians is the rural face
which surfaces just below the veneer of progress.
Then we have the
India of Anil Ambani and his brother who have their mother
omnipresent whenever they choose to pick up a fight. Contrast that
with the
India
where children of a rural family fight for a morsel of food and the
mother brokers peace by putting more buttermilk into the half boiled
rice, barely surviving and still remaining a part of the 30 percent
living below the poverty line.
Then there is
the India of Medha Patkar and Arundhati Roy –who continue to make
“noise” over “non-issues” and keep on attempting to stir the
conscience of India, while the rest of us, the mall-happy middle
class continues to revel in high-class eyewear and super high class
jeans. The mirror that they hold up to the ruling elite of this
country should shame them and inflame civil society. Alas, it is
happening at a very slow pace.
Of course it
would be futile to miss the
India of the
Brahmins who are the arbitrators of everything good for this country
and the teeming millions, the underprivileged, the ethnic minorities and regional identities who are invariably a sacrificial goat to be
guillotined at the altar of the undefined “common good”.
During the last
few months, from left to right to the centre, there have been
discussions about power needs and how the nuclear deal would benefit
India.
Which
India? In
the early fifties, when Nehru initiated the socialist model, it was
meant to be good for India. In 1991, when Narsimha Rao set in the
liberalization process, it was meant to be too good for the common
man.
Today, the man
as the centre of attraction is a Sikh face. Man-mohan Singh,
literally meaning “the charmer”. So, his charisma has worked for his
party; it worked for the party way back in 1991 and it seems to be
working for it even now. The “weakest” prime minister of the
country is today the astute
teacher-turned-official-turned-diplomat-turned statesman, receiving
accolades from within the country and from the
US and other
countries.
There is no
doubt that he has lent imagery to the Sikh turban which the Sikhs
have been longing for a very long time. Just as every politician
who has bargained his position prior to the trust vote, every Sikh
and every other citizen must get his or her pound of flesh of the
progress which Manmohan Singh and his party talks about. Only then
it would be a good deal.
The 123 Indo-US
nuclear deal will be good for
India only if it
alleviates the situation of the poorest of the poor. Well known
professor of development economics at the University of Netherlands
has warned the United States that all its efforts to control to
control global terrorism will come to nought, if the US and other
allies do not do much for global poverty eradication. Pinstrup-Andersen
says, “It is also ethically and morally wrong that a large share of
the world’s population suffers from poverty and hunger in a world as
rich as ours. In addition, global poverty and its consequences are a
tremendous human waste, reflected in reduced economic growth and
development for all—poor and non-poor.”
WSN has put the
whole issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal in perspective with a
Special Report, an indepth cover story, a round-up of what the world
is saying and what the Sikhs should have done with the deal.
23
July, 2008
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