The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh (38 page)

It was clear that the test of true love would be India’s position on Iran’s nuclear programme. Dr Singh had already stated in interviews to the US media that India’s stance was clear. Iran should adhere to its commitments as a signatory to the NPT. Since Iran was an NPT beneficiary as a non-weapons power, it should adhere to the terms of NPT which, among other things, required Iran to be transparent about its civilian nuclear programme and committed it to full adherence to IAEA inspections and protocols.

This was not an anti-Iran position. It merely stated the obvious. However, US lawmakers and the media sought even more explicit statements and Dr Singh finally gave one when he told the media in the US that India did not wish to see any more nuclear weapons powers in its neighbourhood. By asserting that it was in India’s interest to see no new nuclear powers emerging in its neighbourhood, Dr Singh defined his government’s stance on Iran’s nuclear programme in terms of India’s national interest and not as a gesture to the US. It was a view that no Indian political party could have objected to. Yet, there were critics in India, especially in the Left. They interpreted the PM’s categorical statement as ‘kowtowing’ to the US.

It was against this background that Dr Singh was required to take a view on a resolution that Germany, France and Britain (EU-3) put up for vote at the IAEA. The resolution stated that Iran had breached its IAEA commitments and called on Iran to adhere to these while stating that the matter be resolved at the IAEA itself. While supporting the resolution in principle, India disagreed with parts of the resolution to demonstrate its independent position.

The politics of how this position was arrived at was important. Dr Singh was in Chandigarh on 24 September when the EU-3 resolution came up for voting. Natwar Singh called him late in the evening to seek his guidance on how India should vote. Natwar was in New York at the UN. His own view was that India should be on the side of the majority. Dr Singh agreed and suggested that he seek the views of Sonia Gandhi and the members of the CSS, which meant Pranab, Chidambaram and Shivraj Patil. Once Natwar ensured that they were all on board, Dr Singh asked him to convey the government’s view to the Indian ambassador to the IAEA.

Twenty-two countries voted in support of the EU-3 resolution, twelve abstained and only Venezuela voted against it. India went along with the majority. The important thing was that the CCS took a unanimous view on this. Yet, stories were planted in the media that the decision on the Iran vote at the IAEA was that of Dr Singh alone. This appealed to the Left and suited its interpretation of what was happening. Months later, when the IAEA voted to take the matter to the UN Security Council, Russia and China, which had abstained in September, voted with the majority, vindicating India’s stance.

The politics of the Iran vote had less to do with India’s foreign policy than with domestic concerns about the voting preferences of India’s Shia community, on the grounds that they felt an affiliation with Shia-majority Iran. Dr Singh refused to accept the view that the Shia community would not support an initiative that was in the interest of the country. They were Indians first and as patriotic as any other community, he pointed out to those who raised these issues. Dr Singh held steadfastly to that view, refusing to do what he accused Karat of doing, namely of ‘communalizing India’s foreign policy’.

 

 

Progress on the India-US negotiations was slow through 2006. On 17 August 2006, Dr Singh put up one of his best performances in Parliament when, at the end of a lengthy debate on the nuclear deal, he presented his case. He listed out the assurances that the Left had sought, popularly referred to as Sitaram Yechury’s ‘red lines’, and assured the Lok Sabha that the final agreement would adhere to these principles. He assured Parliament that India was not giving up its strategic autonomy. But, he pointed out, in order to secure what was India’s due, the government had to enter into negotiations that involved some ‘give and take’, which is what negotiations are all about.

He quoted Machiavelli’s
The
Prince,
a book I had gifted him on his birthday in September 2004, to say:

It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit from the new order. This lukewarmness arises partly from the fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have the experience of it. Thus it arises that on every opportunity for attacking the reformer, his opponents do so with the zeal of partisans, the others only defend him half-heartedly, so that between them he runs a great danger.

 

Dr Singh admitted that the negotiations he had authorized entailed taking some risk in the hope of making important gains and reassured the House, ‘I am aware of the risks, but for India’s sake, I am willing to take those risks.’

It was a rare act of courage and political grandstanding that won him applause in Parliament and from across the country. The media finally came to accept that the PM knew what he was doing and that this was an important project that deserved support. A series of public- opinion polls conducted by TV channels and newsmagazines showed overwhelming support for the PM, for the deal and for good Indo-US relations. In the weeks to come, negotiations proceeded apace.

In late 2006, there were two important changes of personnel in the ministry of external affairs. Shivshankar Menon, then India’s high commissioner to Pakistan, took charge as foreign secretary and, a month later, Jaishankar was appointed India’s high commissioner to Singapore. Shivshankar’s appointment happened amidst much drama. Till the eleventh hour, I thought Shyam Saran would get an extension.

I got an inkling it was otherwise when, just before lunch on 31 August 2006, Pulok Chatterjee walked into my room and asked how much time it would take for an official announcement to be made public.

I said, ‘Two minutes.’

He was not convinced. I then explained to him that if I were to send a statement as an SMS text message to any TV channel it would appear as ‘breaking news’ within a minute. He seemed satisfied and said he might have an important announcement to make once the PM signed the relevant file, and that I should let him know in case I was going out for lunch. After lunch, Pulok walked in again and told me that the PM had cleared the appointment of Shivshankar Menon as foreign secretary.

I sent a text message to editors at three English news channels, namely Rajdeep Sardesai of CNN-IBN, Barkha Dutt of NDTV and Navika Kumar of Times Now. The three channels flashed the news immediately. Minutes later, the MEA’s spokesperson, Navtej Sarna, called to check if the news report was correct. I confirmed it. I did not know why the announcement was made in this manner. Some speculated that the secrecy was meant to prevent officers superceded by Menon going to court and securing a stay order on the grounds that due procedure had not been followed. Normally, such an announcement is only made after members of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet sign the file. In this case, it was made before the file was signed. Perhaps the PMO did not want a controversy before the announcement.

However, the manner of Shivshankar’s appointment did become the subject of controversy when an IFS officer complained that her seniority had been overlooked in appointing him and demanded an explanation from the government by appealing to the Central Administrative Tribunal. She also questioned ‘the unprecedented manner and timing of the announcement of his [Shivshankar’s] appointment by the Prime Minister’s Office on Aug 31, 2006, well before the approval of the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet on Sept 4, 2006’. The Central Information Commission accepted the officer’s plea that the government owed the officer an explanation for its decision but ultimately dismissed the petition, taking the view that all of this was the PM’s prerogative.

Perhaps Dr Singh’s mindfulness of the Left’s concerns over the India-US nuclear agreement may have led him to give up the idea of giving an extension to Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran, who was handling the negotiations, and overlook the claims of over a dozen foreign service officials, to appoint Shivshankar Menon. On account of Shivshankar’s long-standing personal equations and family connections with Left leaders, the Left regarded him as a ‘friend’.

These changes of personnel in the MEA coincided with the slowing down of the process of negotiation. Indeed, right through the first half of 2007, negotiations between Indian and US officials proceeded at a slow pace. Officials of the DAE, christened by the media as ‘scientists’ and therefore somehow given a superior status than the ordinary ‘bureaucrats’ of other ministries, played their own games.

Once elections to the state assembly in Uttar Pradesh were announced, in early 2007, some DAE officials began to deliberately drag their feet, assuming a victory for Mulayam Singh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party—at the time a critic of the nuclear deal—would weaken Dr Singh. They miscalculated in assuming that Mulayam’s public criticism of the nuclear deal was as ‘ideological’ as that of the Left, rather than just a bargaining chip with which he would eventually seek to strike a deal with the government, for whatever end. One senior DAE scientist-administrator had the audacity to suggest that Mulayam’s victory would mean the end of the nuclear deal, if not of Dr Singh himself.

All these were pipe dreams of technocrats nervous about what the impending transformation of India’s civil nuclear programme would mean for their own turf. It took a long time for Narayanan to get a grip over the DAE establishment. At one stage, Dr Singh had to prod him to speed up the process by saying to him, ‘MK, this agreement should be more important for you than me. I have already made my mark with the economic reforms we launched in 1991. Even if I do not achieve anything as prime minister, I will still be remembered for what I did as finance minister. What about you? Who knows what you have done all your life as an intelligence officer? If you get this agreement done you can publicly claim you have also achieved something.’

When I tried to expose some of these games of DAE officials, a campaign was launched against me in the media by a nuclear scientist who had, in fact, come to me more than once seeking an advisory role in the PMO. By June 2007, impediments had also arisen on the US side and Dr Singh had to raise the issue with President Bush at the G-8 summit at Heiligendamm in Germany. Bush summoned his national security adviser and instructed him to bang heads together in Washington and get the deal done. Worried that on his side the PMO was not able control the negotiations, Dr Singh took the unusual step of redrafting Jaishankar, by then posted in Singapore as high commissioner, into the negotiating process.

Finally, on 3 August 2007, the government was able to make public the 123 Agreement. After a careful reading of the agreement, N. Ram, chief editor of
The
Hindu
and a sceptic on the deal, wrote a full-page editorial comment under the headline ‘A Sound and Honourable 123’. He wrote enthusiastically.

‘It is a sound and honourable agreement and the assurances provided to Parliament by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2006 have been fulfilled virtually in their entirety,’ said the editorial. The editorial criticized the BJP for raising ill-informed objections. ‘The Manmohan Singh government has won for India the keys to unshackle its nuclear programme from the unfair restrictions it has been subjected to for the past 33 years.’

On reading the editorial, I called Ram and thanked him on Dr Singh’s behalf. He sounded ecstatic and was full of praise for the PM. ‘Tell the prime minister he has made history!’

I suggested that he should tell that to him personally. Ram agreed to fly down the same day from Chennai. After checking with Dr Singh, I invited Ram to have breakfast with the prime minister the next day. For more than an hour over breakfast, Ram waxed eloquent on the deal, calling it a great achievement for India and a great political coup for the PM.

When Ram left, Dr Singh sat back in his chair looking completely satisfied. He had crossed the rubicon, he thought. Ram was a close friend of Prakash Karat, and himself a long-standing member of the CPM. Dr Singh took Ram’s endorsement as a signal from the Left that it would not attack the deal. Rarely had I seen Dr Singh so pleased, so at peace, so content as he was that morning.

An hour or so later Ram called me at my office in South Block. Right after his breakfast meeting with the PM, he had gone off to meet Karat.

‘Sanjaya, I have bad news. The Left will not support the 123 Agreement. They will ask the government to put the negotiations on hold.’

This came as a shock. Ram agreed it was so, and said he, too, was surprised. He had spent some time explaining the benefits of the deal to Karat but the latter, he said, was not interested.