Singh’s nuclear-energy

U-turn lets India down

FOR two years Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a self-proclaimed “politician by accident,” invested the little political capital he had into reaching an accord on civilian nuclear-energy cooperation with the US.

Once the Oxford-trained economist had procured an agreement in August—after tough negotiations with George W. Bush’s administration—it seemed he was close to victory.

When his Marxist backers, who keep the government in power, said the deal was a sellout, the mild-mannered prime minister dared them to withdraw their support.

“I will let posterity judge the value of what we have done,” he said in the nation’s parliament.

That was two months ago. Last week, Singh changed his tune.

“I do attach importance to seeing this deal through, but if the deal is not through, it is not the end of life,” he said at a conference in New Delhi.

What that comment means, according to political analysts as well as opposition parties, is that Singh is throwing in the towel on the nuclear accord to save his government.

His coalition partners don’t want him to force an early election. Polls are due in 2009, and which politician wants to give up political power for the sake of nuclear power?

One such important ally, Muthuvel Karunanidhi of Tamil Nadu, went ahead and congratulated the prime minister for “gladdening the hearts of people” by patching up with the Left-wing parties.

“Frankly, the deal is not important,” he told the NDTV news channel. “The government is important.”

No deal

Unless Singh has staged a tactical retreat to take the Marxists by surprise in a later offensive, the so-called 123 agreement with the US is now dead.

The government would now meekly accept the demand of Communist Party of India (Marxist) General Secretary Prakash Karat and delay negotiating safeguards for its nuclear facilities with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

That was one of the three remaining steps in implementing the accord. After the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group had been persuaded to resume trade with India and the US Congress had approved the deal, India would have been able to import enriched uranium and reactors.

None of that may happen now. And that’s really a shame.

A lack of electric power is the biggest hurdle to sustaining 9-percent economic growth in the world’s second-most- populous nation. India’s atomic-power program, which accounts for only 3 percent of the country’s energy production, has been stunted by an international embargo ever since the government tested a nuclear weapon in 1974.

U-turn

Singh’s unexpected U-turn on the nuclear deal greatly diminishes the possibility of early elections, though at the cost of punching a big hole in the government’s credibility.

In the three years that it has been in power, the federal government has spent money on such ill-conceived programs as guaranteeing 100 days of work for each village household. The rural-job guarantee has been an avenue for corruption and has created little in the way of durable assets.

Singh’s ministers have also tried—so far unsuccessfully, thanks to the judiciary—to set aside seats in an already restrictive higher-education system through caste-based quotas.

At the same time, Singh’s government has accomplished next to nothing in areas where it had much to do.

Neglected agenda

The communists aren’t amenable to the idea of government paring its stake in state-run banks. So that plan, which would have made the Indian banking system more competitive, has been put on the backburner.

A proposal to modernize the pension industry has met with a similar fate. The urgent task of amending the country’s ultrarestrictive employment laws, which are impeding the growth of labor-intensive industries, hasn’t even been attempted by the government. It is also hesitant to loosen controls on foreign investment in retail, because the communists are opposed to it.

Any chance that Singh’s government would make up for lost time in pursuing the stalled economic agenda has been squandered now that the Marxists have gotten their way on the nuclear deal.

From now on, populism will reign: next year, 5.5 million government servants will probably be given a hefty pay increase.

Capital inflows into India are too strong at the moment for any of this to have immediate consequences. The Sensex, the benchmark equity index, rose 3.5 percent yesterday to a record. Only when the tide of liquidity turns will the cost of Singh’s surrender begin to rankle.

THE curious dilemma posed by the steadily rising peso, both to the country’s leaders and various sectors that directly feel its impact, provides yet another argument for the notion that economic growth should not rest unduly on any one sector or activity in order to be sustainable.

OVER the weekend one of the country’s leading dailies carried a story that added an interesting angle to that $465.5-million cyber education project that Gloria Arroyo suddenly found to be a very attractive substitute for the aborted $330-million ZTE broadband network deal.

FOR two years Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a self-proclaimed “politician by accident,” invested the little political capital he had into reaching an accord on civilian nuclear-energy cooperation with the US.

John F. Wasik: How to blissfully ignore reasons for 1987 crash

What were you doing and feeling during the 1987 stock-market crash, which will be 20 years ago this week?

Having married just two weeks prior, I was about a year into a great new job. When I saw the biggest one-day percentage loss in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on October 19 and the near-meltdown that followed, I froze. I didn’t call my mutual-fund companies or broker. I stayed in stocks, where almost all of my meager wealth was invested.

THERE is this businesswoman and apartment owner in Parañaque. She is so implacably mad at the Meralco that for the past 41 months, she has been settling her monthly electricity bills with a check on which she also writes, in big block letters, the words: “MERALCO MANDURUGAS” (scammer or swindler).

Do I have to have a living will? Last year, I had an experience that gave me the distinct impression that if I didn’t have one, my life was hardly worth, well, living.