The negotiations with the IAEA and the NSG’s endorsements are about to be finalised, and the deal will come up before the nation by July. Some in the press have written that the deal will not produce cheap electricity and hence it has no utility. But what is at stake is not cheap electricity but international barriers to 21st century technological growth, access to world class civilian nuclear and space technology, and the removal of barriers to the purchase of the best equipment for our defence forces, set up after our ill-timed 1974 nuclear explosion. It is a good deal on all counts — as promised by the PM, but opposed by the BJP which made an un-coordinated, ill-prepared, abortive attempt with the ‘Next Steps’ Agreement in 2002 to achieve the same result.

In the grand stand of world politics, the chances of India’s tortoise like victory against China are fancied by all — except the Chinese and the Indian communists. Many may imagine that Chinese prosperity is based on selling millions of plastic Hanumans to India and rubber sandals and bath brushes to Wal Mart. Not so. China’s huge trade surplus comes from manufacturing based on technology purchases unfettered by the 123 clause, utilised to manufacture computers, electronic goods, medical and diagnostic equipment and aerospace parts. In 2001, China imported and paid for 227 hi-tech and dual use licenses which jumped to 7,800 in 2007, while India’s slumped from 574 in 2001 to 356 in the same period. Not surprisingly China’s high-technology industrial output went from 250 billion Yuan in 1999 to 1750 billion Yuan in 2005. Without the 123, agreement and the Hyde Act, no high-tech dual use licenses can come to India without the approval of the US Department of Commerce or the State Department, and no US company gets into this hassle unless the order is worth billions of dollars. China was never hampered by the sanctions imposed on a non-NPT power. The US now wishes to broker India’s release from those constraints. The Indian communists would rather that India remain crippled.

... contd.