“Will the BJP Stand Up?”
The Business Standard
Apr 3, 2008
It is not often that countries stare gift horses in the mouth. Nor is it usual for responsible political parties to behave in a manner that can hurt the long-term interests of their country. Yet, over the last couple of years and more, this is exactly the kind of behaviour that India has witnessed. When it comes to economic reform, the Communist allies of the UPA government have made sure that none takes place. The result is that a massive supply bottleneck has come into existence, which will take years to remove. But on behalf of the Communists, it can at least be said that they have been consistent in their opposition to liberal economic policies. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Indo-US civil nuclear deal. Not only did the party, when it was in power until 2004, initiate the process that eventually culminated in the US offering India the deal; it was in fact willing to barter away its right to test (by signing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) in return for far less than is on offer right now. Most people had expected that the deal would not go through because US legislators might not play along; no one expected that the problem would be in India, which is the beneficiary party. But such are the tragic absurdities of Indian politics.
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