Unholy P Alliance

Unholy P Alliance
By Susenjit Guha

Congress party wants to fulfill one single mission and see it through during its tenure: the Indo-US nuclear deal. For that, the dogging problems which are affecting us to the core can remain our problems for the time being. We will have to pay more or go without not only some basiccommodities but for construction material like cement and life saving drugs also.

Ever wondered why the Congress led UPA government is obsessed with the N-deal when the most pressing issues like inflation---hovering above 11% after creeping up and up for months and several weeks in a row---and price rises are forcing the average Indian to skip his basic necessities?

Average Indians outnumber the above average gung-ho about the N-deal several times over.

Again, isn't it ridiculous that a Prime Minister of India could not reply to a query about going ahead with the deal when he was on Indian soil, but did so 35000 feet above ground on an Air India flight which Congressmen believe to be India in mid-air?

And the Congress's allegation that the Left is insensitive to national mood at the time of the gory incident in Kabul does not hold when the party's top brass could not attend the greatest Indian war hero Sam Manekshaw's funeral recently. Wasn't he the architect of India's greatest hour when shestood firm in the face of the entire western world's insensitivity towards genocide perpetrated by Pakistan and their ally, a drunken general?

But times have changed and sovereignty is passé.

Congress party wants to fulfill one single mission and see it through during its tenure: the Indo-US nuclear deal. For that, the dogging problems which are affecting us to the core can remain our problems for the time being. We will have to pay more or go without not only some basiccommodities but for construction material like cement and life saving drugs also.

After all, we shouldn't expect the nation's Prime Minister who is also a venerable economist to solve our economic problems, leave alone apprehending and taking the right decisions to avoid them. Similarly the Left which has opted out of the UPA alliance shouldn't have expected the text of the safeguards agreement with the IAEA revealed to them.

To go through the plan, turncoat ideologues or political parties bereft of ideologies can be best alliance partners during crunch time. Even one or two MP's on the sidelines would count and their support would come at a price.

What an alliance would that be!

Mulayam Singh Yadav has suddenly re-educated himself about the benefits of the N-deal from none other than former scientist- President Abdul Kalam. In one fell swoop, the SP, a party whose heart bleeds for the Muslims hasattempted to placate the Muslims. Some Muslim MP's of the party are having second thoughts, but Mulayam Singh needs to get the CBI probing his disproportionate assets off his back. He and his man Friday are defending their decision to support the Congress by magnifying BJP's threat over Bush's.

You don't have to be a Marxist or a renascent Hindu bigot to be intrigued at the government's one point obsession with honouring the commitments to George W Bush.

With barely half a year to go, Bush is the most unpopular President in US history according the US Gallup polls. He was booed and heckled by his own countrymen during his recent US Independence Day speech. The rest of the world and the media call him a 'toxic Texan' with a 'pea sized brain' or a'kid who never grew up', and someone who devastated America's global image and standing trying to outdo his father.

Much has been written about the hazards, exorbitant charges for electric power---which is being hard sold---from the N-deal and off course the abundance of untapped uranium in India which can keep us non-aligned and upright.

Surely, the Left's concern of India ultimately morphing into a security ally of the US is not unfounded. Indians cannot be used as a buffer or even a listening post of the US for China. Chinese support at the NSG was expected since the N-deal would stop any further tests by India and would serve US' security interests in the region. Traditional South Asian ally,Pakistan, is now a client state of the US. They may outsource the job of helping Pakistan Frontier Corps to
India. Emerging India will be made to take the load of US embroilment in South Asia.

We shall be following in the footsteps of US vassal states and shouldn't be concerned about the opposition brewing in Taiwan and South Korea.

And 'change' peddler Barack Obama flip flopping on his way to the finals is time and again playing to the conservative American gallery about Iran, the mid-east and the blinkered view of Israeli atrocities.

We shall sacrifice our own traditional allies Iran and Central Asia's vital energy sources for the sake of George W Bush. We will cease to maintain an independent China policy which may be tampered with once US links India to its security interests.

According to media reports, India has 60000 tons of proven uranium reserves to last 50 years and with improved mining technology more untapped, even deep seated deposits could be unearthed.

So why does India have to depend on the 40 odd nations for raw material whose supply hinges on the N-deal?

Keep wondering.