China, for its part, used the international focus on nuclear non-proliferation to draw closer, strangely, to Washington. China went in favour of all the UN Security Council resolutions on Iran. It successfully managed to project itself as the voice of correction without, in any manner, blocking economic sanctions. It played the bridge with the West through the six-party talks and brought North Korea to the negotiating table. And all this while, it aggressively stitched up civilian nuclear agreements with Australia and now, Russia. Today, China fashions itself as a key arbitrator in nuclear disarmament and potentially the biggest consumer of the re-emerging nuclear energy industry; and, effectively, emerging as the centrepiece of the international nuclear discourse.

India? It let time and opportunity slip away. It failed to do the political hardsell that this deal was not only about energy and strategic parity but that it was also a nation’s instrument of power, nurtured over half a century by successive governments. The opportunity was created by some crafty diplomacy in the past decade and taken forward through some clever negotiations to realise the nuclear deal. In these three years, the government of India allowed all this to be hijacked by political interests.

In 2008, India still stands at the crossroads while Iran has the luxury of harbouring hope as elections draw closer in the US, and China lives in hope as it watches its plans deliver results. Who is to blame? The Left, because it wasn’t willing to look at the facts without its anti-US ideological prism? Maybe. But it’s clear the Left acted in its political interest, using the nuclear deal as a gel for mobilising its cadres. The BJP too acted in its political interest, daring to snatch away the nationalist plank from the Congress in the name of nuclear testing. What was the Congress’s political interest? To buy a few months in power.

... contd.