The overwhelming approval by the International Relations Committee of the US House of Representatives of the Indo-US nuclear deal augurs well. We need not detain ourselves on the exhortatory statements urging India to do this or that, as long as the main legislation follows the letter and spirit of the agreements reached by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President George W Bush in July last year and this March. Considering that the legislation for modifying the 1954 Atomic Energy Act -- to enable Washington to make the landmark turnaround in its non-proliferation policy towards India -- was widely expected to take flak from hostile lawmakers, it has had a surprisingly smooth passage with a 37-5 vote. If the powerful US Senate Foreign Relations Committee also endorses it later today, as seems likely, the deal will eventually win majority bipartisan support in Congress.
Which is just as well since Washington and New Delhi have staked a great deal of political capital on the deal. The Bush administration seems to have succeeded in forcing Congress to choose between approving the deal -- and possibly ‘damaging nuclear nonproliferation’ -- or rejecting it and splitting an important strategic relationship. This apparently prompted lawmakers to overlook major roadblocks like the presidential certification for a final inspections plan by the IAEA. In any case, New Delhi is likely to continue to insist that such inspections should have minimal frequency and that too only in power plants with foreign fuel. But then these are technicalities that can be sorted out.
Future generations will probably remember this deal for very different reasons than the debate over nuclear proliferation. Apart from providing a clean source of power to help the country contribute to the global effort to cut CO2 emissions, it will lay the foundations of a new and mutually beneficial relationship with the US.