Aahh... Seema Mustafa... (Roll Eyes)
Hi,I came across this gem from Seema Mustafa.
It has many quotable quotes such as,
So in off the record briefings that governments excel in — the more insecure they are the more comfortable they feel the need for select, unattributable briefings — the scientists have been roundly criticised for opposing the nuclear deal, and not allowing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his government to completely compromise Indian sovereignty in the process.
Seema dear, no government official is under an obligation to tell you a damn thing... especially if they don't trust you.
At every attempt the media has tried to shape the debate on the nuclear deal to suit the interests of external powers. The consistent overuse of media penetrations by interests hostile to this deal in the US is gravely limiting what the Government can/cannot say to reporters about this matter.
The Indian media will now have to prove its ability to function as a responsible creature before it is ever entrusted with information of value!
Let me tell you a few fundamental things about the Indo-US nuclear deal, this is something that is fundamentally obvious, but might get lost in the large amount of pillow talk with "sources".
1) The biggest problem right now in India is a growing nexus of disparity in an extremely large population size. We anticipate that the population of India will be 1.6 Billion by 2050. Not even in mythology have so many people lived off this land. The strain on resources will be indescribably intense. Disparity forms a basis for political features in any society, so it is in India, and maintaining even the most basic political stability mandates maintaining a tight grip on the nexus of disparity.
2) Some 600-800 million of these 1.6 Billion are going to be young i.e. less than 30 years old. They will have wants and desires and they will agitate intensely for satisfaction. They will feel the nexus very sharply. We are an advanced civilisation capable of sustaining multiple narratives under one roof, but the ability to satisfy the demands of the young is the key to the stability of the entire political system.
3) One of the biggest demands will be for steadily improving living standards, we are going to have to improve the entire populations access to food (and water) resources, energy, healthcare, ecological protections and information on a scale that has never been attempted before. This requires the government to take very big steps to setup local reserves of required to meet contingencies on a long time scale.
4) Without a domestic source (i.e. cheap!! subsidised!! easily accessible for the poorest of the poor Indians!!) of energy, the Government will not be able to meet the nation's needs. Emerging global constraints on energy use demand that the energy resource be renewable. This means we have to go in for Homi Bhabha's closed fuel cycle. However this also means we reduce our dependence on imported carbon fuels.
5) This is where the confrontation with the US begins. The entire US economy runs on cheap energy. The energy in the US is cheap because the "Government of the US" (that fine mix of public institutions and private industry) effectively subsidises the price of energy. Any attempt in India to restructure its energy market (i.e. with 800 million customers) will theoretically impair the American ability to keep their subsidy racket going. So a sense of paranoia over inflating energy costs could make America want to control India's access to new energy resources.
6) From India's perspective this is unacceptable. We cannot become dependent on foreign fuel imports. If we import Uranium from the US sources, we cannot allow the trade to come with constraints on our development of the three phase cycle. We cannot buy Uranium from them if they won't let us reprocess it. We can't buy reactors from them, if they won't share the technology required to manufacture the spares in India. We cannot allow them to dictate what weapons we make or how we make them - that completely contravenes all notions of soverignity.
7) We are willing to observe certain voluntary moratoriums but we can't make any bigger promises that we wont do whatever it takes to protect ourselves - if the situation goes south - as it might when the heavily planned American restructuring of their energy inefficient economy runs into turbulence.
posted by maverick @ 8:15 AM
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