America
India-US arrive at modus vivendi on nuclear deal
By
By C Uday Bhaskar
The much awaited and long-delayed modus-vivendi between India and the
US over the finalization of the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement
that began in July 2005 has finally been achieved Sunday (Jan 25) on the
first day of US President Barack Obama's visit to India.
The
major obstacles were the nature of the liability clauses in the event of
any nuclear accident or incident which India wanted and the
nuclear-reactor inspection rights that the US had sought. India had
introduced a nuclear liability law in 2010 -- as it happens, at the
behest of the BJP which was then in the opposition -- that placed the
liability on the supplier in the event of a nuclear accident. This is at
variance with the global norm which places the liability in such
exigencies on the operator. However, this stipulation was not acceptable
to the US.
The US, in turn, sought to impose 'flag rights in
perpetuity', meaning that in the event India acquired a US nuclear
reactor, the US would retain the right in perpetuity to inspect any
material or equipment that was being used in or associated with the said
reactor. India saw this as an infringement of its nuclear sovereignty
and resisted such a clause.
Consequently, the much anticipated
civilian nuclear cooperation commerce between the US and India remained a
non-starter and the issue continued to fester from late 2008 when the
(George W.) Bush administration had gone the extra mile to tweak its
domestic legislation to accord India an exceptional status in the global
nuclear domain.
The BJP-led NDA government, which assumed office
in May 2014, had prioritized the nuclear issue and Prime Minister
Narendra Modi indicated that this matter would receive the highest
political attention when he visited the US in September 2014 for his
first meeting with President Obama. However, despite a series of
meetings between the officials on both sides over the last few months,
it appeared that a compromise on the nuclear issue remained elusive.
The
dramatic "breakthrough" - as Obama himself described it - announced
Sunday is to be welcomed and is indicative of the joint political
resolve that the Modi-Obama combine has been able to demonstrate to
redress a long festering issue that has prevented the India-US bilateral
relationship from realizing the potential benefits embedded in the
radical breakthrough of July 2005 that had ended India's nuclear
isolation in the global comity.
It may be recalled that even in
July 2005, when then prime minister Manmohan Singh had met with then US
president George W. Bush in Washington, the radical civilian nuclear
cooperation agreement needed the last minute high level political nudge
to reconcile the differences between the two sides. History may have
been repeated this time in Delhi.
The impact of this Delhi
breakthrough on the nuclear issue will re-energize and reset the
moribund India-US bilateral relationship and this will in all likelihood
have a beneficial ripple effect on all the other issues that are
awaiting traction during the current Obama visit.
Hopefully,
India will be able to overcome some of its earlier inhibitions regarding
the foundational agreements as regards the defence and military sector
and this, in turn, will allow Delhi to begin actively reviewing the high
technology possibilities that were first mooted in July 2005 and then
signed October 2008.
This has been a long wait but the Modi-Obama
'chai pe charcha' (conversation over tea) has cleared the logjam. The
eagle and the elephant may still tango!
(C. Uday Bhaskar is
Director, Society for Policy Studies. The views expressed are personal.
He can be contacted at [email protected])