The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh

by Sanjaya Baru

  The critical next step was for the US to secure Congressional approval of changes to its laws that would enable the US President to offer India access to high- and dual-use technologies. Once India signed what was called the 123 Agreement, the US Congress would be able to change the relevant laws.

  The 18 July joint statement opened the door for these negotiations. Dr Singh had made history. In the midst of our euphoria, however, we little imagined that the process would finally end only thirty-nine months later, after hundreds of heated hours of debate in Parliament, many days of excruciating negotiations around the world, and the reconstitution of the UPA alliance.

  The summit meeting at the White House was followed the next day by the PM’s address to the joint session of the US Congress. It was a speech written with care and deliberation by Montek and myself, with important inputs from Jaishankar. Dr Singh rehearsed his delivery diligently. Since US audiences like to applaud well-crafted sentences, the punchlines were underlined so that he knew which sentences to emphasize and when to pause, in case there was applause.

  Dr Singh entered the hall to a standing ovation and, as he made his way down the aisle, he was repeatedly stopped for handshakes, the longest stop being with Senator Hillary Clinton. Usually, Dr Singh was a weak orator. The only occasion on which he made an effort to speak clearly and loudly, emphasizing key phrases, was when he delivered the Independence Day address. However, he knew the US Congress speech was a historic foreign policy statement to an important audience. His listeners were the very Congressmen and women who would have to give their vote of approval to the nuclear deal that he was seeking to strike with President Bush. The purpose of this speech was to win over their hearts and minds. He rose to the occasion.

  As Jaishankar and I sat with copies of the speech, pen in hand to mark statements that were applauded, we found him being applauded for every minute of speaking time. The prime minister, we later noted, had been interrupted no less than thirty-three times. It was a 3000-word speech. In his early days in office, Dr Singh would read 100 words in a minute. As he aged, his pace slowed down to seventy-five to eighty words per minute. At this rate, the address should normally have taken him a little over thirty minutes. It, in fact, took close to forty-five minutes, because of the frequent ovations—some brief, about five to ten seconds, some long and some standing.

  Sure, there were many India sceptics in that audience and some would later actively try to block the nuclear deal. But that morning, the halls of the US Congress reverberated to unending applause for a man who spoke candidly and honestly, and presented India in a new light to a new world.

  ‘Partnerships can be of two kinds,’ he said as he ended his address. ‘There are partnerships based on principle and there are partnerships based on pragmatism. I believe we are at a juncture where we can embark on a partnership that can draw both on principle as well as pragmatism.’

  With each round of applause, we could see Dr Singh’s confidence grow, his voice rise and his articulation become clearer. It was very moving to see and feel the palpable admiration for this shy, diminutive turbaned man trying to alter the destiny of the world’s biggest democracy.

  In another era, with a different prime minister, like Indira Gandhi or Rajiv Gandhi, the Congress party would have had its members lining the streets of Delhi to welcome the PM back after such a historic visit. That was not to be. Not only did the Left Front and the BJP manage to put the Congress on the defensive with their knee-jerk condemnation of the agreement even before the PM explained its details to them, there were also internal worries that the PM’s bonhomie with President Bush would alienate the party’s Muslim vote base and encourage the traditionally anti-US Left to destabilize the minority government.

  Within ten days of returning home, Dr Singh made a statement in Parliament allaying fears that there was a ‘secret deal’ behind the public one, and denying that India was entering into a military alliance with the US against China. He also assured the Parliament that the negotiations with the US to work out the separation plan and other details would not hurt India’s strategic nuclear programme. The media believed the PM, but the BJP and the Left refused to do so. The Left’s opposition was ideological, given its traditional anti-US stance. The BJP’s was expedient, given that it was the Vajpayee government that had initiated a dialogue with the US to get this very result.

  As the negotiations progressed, Dr Singh discovered that he had to handle far too many egos at home. The debate on the nuclear deal got enmeshed, on the one hand, with domestic political battles both within the ruling Congress party and with the Opposition, and on the other, with inter-ministerial turf battles, especially between the DAE and the ministry of external affairs.

  A considerable part of Dr Singh’s time was taken up explaining the deal to his party leadership and the Opposition, and handling critics and opponents within the government, especially the DAE. The DAE had to not only overcome its trust deficit with the US, created by years of US sanctions, but also its lack of trust in the PM. He was seen as a pacifist who was opposed to nuclear weaponization and, therefore, likely to sell India cheap.

  Some of Dr Singh’s critics spread the word that he had not only cut the DAE’s budget as finance minister, but had also opposed a plan to conduct nuclear tests in the winter of 1995. This was only half-true. Narasimha Rao did consider the option of testing in 1995 but chose not to do so because the ministry of finance had estimated that the economy would not be able to bear the burden of the sanctions that developed countries would impose on India. Later, in 1998, the Vajpayee government, too, calculated the economic cost of testing, and took several steps to neutralize the likely impact of sanctions, which in the end turned out to be much less than feared. This was partly because, in 1998, the economy was stronger than it had been in 1995. But India’s nuclear hawks preferred to see the issue in simplistic terms.

  Dr Singh realized that he had to build a wider constituency of support for his initiative within the government and not allow the DAE to have a veto. Towards this end, he created the ECC in July 2005, including in it ministers from all energy-related ministries, which brought in Finance Minister Chidambaram and Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde, politically influential and supportive of the PM; the DAE was just one of the many departments dealing with energy policy represented here. This omnibus group was tasked to create a wider energy policy framework within which, it was hoped, negotiations with the US could be explained to the domestic political audience. It is a different matter that over time the DAE secured a veto over the deal mainly by using the political opposition to bolster its own position as a reluctant party to the deal.

  After the ECC’s first meeting on 6 August 2005, a PMO press release said:

  The Prime Minister said that India must invest in nuclear energy and the recent steps he has taken to end India’s global isolation in this regard should help the country increase the share of nuclear energy in the overall energy mix of the economy. Dr Anil Kakodkar, Secretary, Department of Atomic Energy, also emphasized the need for India to import uranium and invest in uranium mining to meet the requirements of nuclear power generation. He drew attention to the fact that the price of domestically mined uranium is 4 to 5 times that of imported uranium. Several participants complimented the Prime Minister for successfully concluding a deal with the United States that would enable India to import uranium for nuclear power projects.

  The PMO spared no effort to educate public and political opinion on the agreement and Dr Singh spoke at length in both Houses of Parliament. Diplomats Jayant Prasad and S. Jaishankar, both of whom had intimate knowledge of the nuclear deal, helped me prepare a booklet, ‘Facts about India’s Initiative for Seeking International Cooperation in Civil Nuclear Energy’, that was then translated into all Indian languages and published by the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) of the ministry of information and broadcasting. While the essence of the deal was a strategic gain for India, in that India’s i
solation within the international nuclear regime would end, the gains were projected to the general public as an easing of the domestic energy supply situation. Ordinary people across the country would easily understand that, deprived as they are of assured electricity.

  Between August 2005 and February 2006, the negotiations focused on the separation plan. India had a total of twenty-two nuclear power plants in 2005. The US side suggested that India could classify four of these as required for its strategic programme. The Indian side wanted eight of the twenty-two, including two research reactors, classified as part of its strategic programme, with fourteen separated out as civilian facilities that would be brought under IAEA safeguards. For seven months these negotiations went on with no agreement.

  President Bush was scheduled to visit India on 2 March and even a fortnight ahead of his visit, there was no agreement on a separation plan. Without a separation plan the Bush administration would not be able to go to the Congress to secure its approval of the deal. If the two sides were unable to arrive at an agreement, the Bush visit would be long on rhetoric and short on substance.

  On Wednesday, 22 February, Rama and I went to Andhra Bhavan for dinner. We were in ‘mid-thaali’ when my mobile phone rang. It was a 3 RCR number. It was the PM himself, summoning me. I forced Rama to forgo dessert and we drove straight to the PM’s house.

  While noting the urgency in the PM’s voice, I thought I was being summoned for a discussion on his reply the next morning to the debate in the Lok Sabha on the motion of thanks for the President’s address to the Parliament. I had drafted his reply and felt he might want to go over some points I had made. At RCR, Rama chose to wait in the car park assuming I would be back soon.

  When I reached 3 RCR, Dr Singh was seated in his living room looking distraught. ‘We do not have an agreement as yet and President Bush is coming in a week’s time. I don’t think this nuclear agreement will go through,’ he said.

  I was not prepared for this. I had not been in the loop on the ongoing negotiations and was unaware that they were on the verge of breaking down. The Indian side still wanted a 14:8 division between civilian and military reactors, while the American side had not budged from its position of 18:4. Moreover, the Indian side was particularly keen on keeping the two research reactors out of IAEA safeguards .The PM was clear in his mind that his government had made its best offer and would not back down. It was up to the American side to agree, or close the negotiations and walk away. The latter would be disastrous, given the political capital the PM had already expended on this matter. Clearly, he was worried.

  He also believed that the deadlock was only at the level of the negotiators and if President Bush were made aware of this, he would get the American negotiators to back off and accept Indian terms. ‘When I explained to President Bush what we would be able to accept, he was okay with that,’ he said. ‘He kept repeating to me that it was not his intention to hurt India’s strategic capability. So I do not think this US insistence on eighteen has his approval. He needs to be made aware of the deadlock so that he can intervene with his people.’

  I realized Dr Singh was wondering if there was any way I could help. I imagined he must have reached out to other interlocutors as well. I knew my friend Ashley Tellis, who had access to people in the White House, was already in Delhi. Maybe he could convey a message to the White House. Offering to try, I went back to the car park and called Ashley. We agreed to meet for breakfast at his hotel the next morning.

  I first met Ashley as a member of an India-US ‘track two’ group sponsored by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Aspen Strategy Group, a high-powered US think tank. An Indian American from Goa, Ashley had made his mark as a bright spark on the foreign policy and strategic affairs think tank circuit in the US. After the Pokhran-II nuclear tests, he wrote an authoritative book on India’s nuclear strategy. He came to be noticed in India’s policymaking circles when US ambassador Robert Blackwill inducted Ashley as his adviser in the US embassy in Delhi. Ashley was the perfect interlocutor between India and the US. He understood both systems well and was committed to good relations between the two democracies. He had acquired impeccable professional credentials as an ‘American’ analyst, while developing friendships in India based on trust. I certainly knew I could trust him.

  Over breakfast, we discussed all the options and the offers the two sides had made to each other on the separation plan. I conveyed Dr Singh’s view that a 14:8 separation plan was India’s bottom line and that Dr Singh felt President Bush would approve the Indian offer, if only he were made aware of it. Ashley said this would be difficult to sell with the anti-deal ‘non-proliferation lobby’ in the US Congress. He felt the second-best deal possible would be one where India committed to 14 in the first round and agreed to go up to 18 by a specified date, like 2014 or 2016 at the latest. He was also not sure if the US side would agree to the Indian demand to keep fast breeder research reactors outside the civilian category.

  Having offered his own views, Ashley agreed to convey Dr Singh’s message to his contacts in the White House. When I drove to 3 RCR and told the PM what had transpired with Ashley, he was disappointed. ‘This will not work,’ he mumbled. It seemed as if he had not slept through the night.

  Later that morning, he drove to Parliament to reply to the debate on the motion of thanks to the President’s address. He spoke at length about almost every issue that was raised in the debate but, surprisingly, made no reference at all to the state of the negotiations on the Indo-US nuclear agreement, or what he expected from the Bush visit a few days later. He ended his lengthy, mostly extempore statement by defending his vision of Indian foreign policy and concluded:

  Sir, this House has my solemn assurance that in pursuing our foreign policy, in ensuring our national security, and in promoting our economic development, our government will always have the nation’s interest uppermost in our mind. I do believe we have the trust and confidence of the people of India.

  Four days later, on 27 February, Dr Singh made a lengthy suo moto statement in Parliament, virtually setting out India’s terms for an agreement. This statement was aimed partly at reassuring domestic critics of the deal and partly at drawing public red lines on what was on offer to the US. His lengthy statement pressed all the right buttons for various constituencies at home and abroad. On the key issue of the separation plan it said:

  . . . our proposed Separation Plan entails identifying in phases, a number of our thermal nuclear reactors as civilian facilities to be placed under IAEA safeguards, amounting to roughly 65% of the total installed thermal nuclear power capacity, by the end of the Separation Plan. A list of some other DAE facilities may be added to the list of facilities within the civilian domain. The Separation Plan will create a clearly defined civilian domain, where IAEA safeguards apply. On our part, we are committed not to divert any nuclear material intended for the civilian domain from designated civilian use or for export to third countries without safeguards.

  The percentage specified indicated that only fourteen plants would be on offer for separation. The DAE had obviously rejected Ashley’s ‘second option’ and forced the PM to state India’s bottom line in Parliament, thus closing any window for negotiation. It was a take-it-or-leave-it stand. US negotiators were reportedly livid. Till the very last minute, they did not relent.

  On the evening of 1 March, President Bush was received at Palam airport by Dr Singh. As he got into his car, Bush turned to M.K. Narayanan and, placing his hands on Narayanan’s shoulder and making direct eye contact with him, he said, loud enough for others around to hear, ‘I want that deal!’

  The negotiating teams on both sides got the message. President Bush was making it clear to everyone, on his side and ours, that whatever differences were still holding up an agreement should be resolved overnight so that by the next morning, when he sat down with Dr Singh for the formal summit meeting, the agreement would be ready for the two leaders’ signatures.

  Indian
and US negotiators burnt the midnight oil narrowing their differences so that they could report back to their leaders the next morning that they now had a deal. At 8.30 a.m. on the morning of 2 March, I arrived at the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan for the ceremonial welcome of the President. Soldiers from the army, navy and air force were smartly lined up for the guard of honour. As senior ministers and officials arrived one by one and took their allotted seats, Ronen Sen walked up to me and indicated that most differences had been ironed out and things should fall into place in time for the two leaders to make an announcement.

  Referring to a conversation he had with Pranab Mukherjee, at the time defence minister (referred to in official parlance as raksha mantri, and therefore RM), whose support for the nuclear deal was not fully assured till then, Ronen added, ‘I spoke to RM. He is now supportive. He understands the importance of getting the deal and the dangers of it falling through. We have him on our side.’

  Pranab’s support for the deal was in some doubt mainly because, according to some political observers, it was felt he may want to remain in the good books of the CPI(M) given his dependence on the Left to get re-elected to the Lok Sabha from West Bengal. Ronen’s outreach to Pranab and the reassuring reply was, therefore, helpful.

  I saw the PM’s motorcade arrive at the forecourt and walked up to Dr Singh. He looked preoccupied. After he finished greeting his ministerial colleagues, he turned to me, saying, ‘So?’ in a matter-of-fact way. That was always my cue to offer him the latest news or gossip. I briefed him on what Ronen had just mentioned to me.

  ‘Can I trust him?’ he asked, referring to the defence minister. I said there was no reason why Pranab would lie to Ronen. If he had assured Ronen of his cooperation, then we should trust him. But, I added that there was no harm in Dr Singh having another word with Pranab before the formal meetings at Hyderabad House.