NEW DELHI: Unrelenting in its opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal, the CPM
has blamed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for triggering and prolonging the
political crisis over the contentious issue. In a signed article in the latest
issue of party organ 'People's Democracy', CPM general secretary Prakash Karat
has written that the cause for plunging the country into a political crisis once
again "lies squarely in PM's renewed bid to go to the IAEA" to get the deal
approved.
...The schedule set by the US, Karat said, was "impelling the PM
to go ahead regardless of the consequences". The reason for the urgency was "the
insistence of the Bush administration that India complete the procedures for the
safeguards agreement with the IAEA so that the Americans can take the step of
formally initiating the process in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to get the waiver
for nuclear trade with India", he said.
This is what's going on: the main party in the ruling coalition (Congress) and some others in the coalition are working out a deal to get material from the US to set up some nuclear power plants. But some parties in the coalition don't like the plan, because they say it would give the US too much control over India's supply of energy, and would have too much influence over India because of it. They want to see another deal go through with Iran, which would involve a fuel pipeline from Iran to India and Pakistan. Apparently they think that if India has to be energy dependent, it's better off depending on Iran. For some reason they don't seem concerned about letting Iran control India's fuel supply. Here's a Pakistan perspective:
As articulated over and over again, one of the chief reasons for the US dangling
of the nuclear deal to India was to tuck India into a strategic partnership to
suit the geopolitical aims of the global hegemon. And that of course meant that
India could be used in a web of relationships that would be positioned in
opposition to whomever the US sees as a threat in the Asian region. And it does
not take too much brainpower to realise that rising economic powers China in
east/ southern Asia and Iran in west Asia are seen as the primary poles of
opposition to American hegemony in the continent. As such, the Americans have an
intertwined relationship with the Chinese, with the latter’s manufacturing base
dependent upon the purchasing power of the former and the former servicing its
economy despite huge fiscal deficits through Chinese holding of US treasury
bonds...
So basically, the parties that want stronger ties with the US support the nuclear deal, while the parties that want stronger ties with Iran like the pipeline. Something's got to give.
Meanwhile. the day after we got here there was a national strike of transit workers. They were striking against an increase in the price of gas. A few weeks ago we visited this waterfall area. It was pretty scenic. They want to build a dam up the river, which would stop the waterfall, as well as the river that a bunch of farmers in the area depend on for irrigation. There are a series of communities and villages along a 20 kilometer stretch of the river that would be hurt by the dam, and the forests world dry up, too. On the bright side, the dam would supple 1 hour of electricity per day to a few hundred households. We visited the area with an economist who has been working to organize people in the area to do nonviolent protests against the dam, because it would take away their source livelihood. They've actually been protesting the issue for 6 years. For the past 100-some days they've been holding a sit-in at the entrance to the waterfall park, in an effort to raise awareness. So far only the local media has taken note. Yesterday they announced that there would be nightly 1-hour power outages because the monsoons haven't brought enough rain to fill the reservoirs to power the generators, etc.
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