{"id":25,"date":"2005-07-24T00:50:57","date_gmt":"2005-07-24T04:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/2005\/07\/24\/comanche-station\/"},"modified":"2005-07-24T00:50:57","modified_gmt":"2005-07-24T04:50:57","slug":"comanche-station","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/2005\/07\/24\/comanche-station\/","title":{"rendered":"Comanche Station"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Manmohan Singh’s Washington visit<\/A> may have made a splash in America’s media for 24 hours or so, but it was 3-ring flop back home.   In fact, a few more triumphs like this, and Mr Singh may be out of a job.   Not only is the opposition BJP calling for his head<\/A>,  prominent members of his ruling Congress party (along with many of the communists with whom they serve in the government UPA coaltion) are looking to give Singh his walking papers.<\/P>
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It’s his own fault.   Singh allowed himself to be seduced last December into thinking the US supported India’s bid for a permanent seat on any expanded Security Council at the UN.   What was really happening though was some old-fashioned horse trading.   The Americans wanted two things; an end to the Iran-India-Pakistan gas pipeline project (a threat to Israel), and Delhi’s signature on the WTO agreement<\/A> giving the pharmaceutical companies full protection under its product patent and process patent provisions.   Never mind that this would increase by four times what Indians pay for <\/EM>drugs, both the international pharmaceutical industry (big contributors to Bush and the Republicans) and the growing BPO (business process outsourcing) sector were desperate to have it.   So, the carrot of a security council seat was held out to Delhi, together with a promise of support for its nuclear-weapons program.   In the end, Mr Singh, who caved on the pharmaceutical issue and, apparently, the trans-Asian gas pipleine, got neither.   He did receive a vaguely-worded promise of American aid for India’s civilian<\/EM> nuclear energy program, but even that is not turning out what it was cracked up to be.   <\/P>
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So, Fissiporous cracks are beginning to widen in the Kafkaesque world of Indian political alliances.  The BJP cynically plays the nationalist card on the pipeline and especially the phantom US seat.  The Communists are unhappy about the BPO-friendly schemes being hatched by Congress ministers in the government (they were hoping too for India’s veto power on the security council).<\/P>
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So, what happens next?   All things being equal, probably nothing.   The Congress is unpopular, but the BJP is even more so.   The Communists are not going to put the kibosh on the UPA government<\/A>.   They still support important provisions of the Common Minimum Program<\/A>, the ruling scheme set up when the Left won the last election.   Besides, like Communists everywhere who join bourgeois governments merely to push them to the Left, they are reaping plenty of the growing voter antipathy toward all political groupings<\/EM>.   Another election might end up with the Communists coming out the loser.<\/P>
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Manmohan Singh has exercised a lamentable want of discretion and has been much reduced for his pains.   He has succeeded in infuriating his nationalist supporters, while handing the opposition new ammunition to be used to cripple the ruling Congress party.   Further, he has alienated many liberals in the west by refusing to toe the line on the nuclear weapons issue (many had hoped that India would eventually sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty<\/A>).   Many of them are worried that Mr Singh’s “intransigence” (another fop to Washington) will encourage others to acquire or expand their nuclear programs.<\/P>
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So, the clear winner for now is not India, but President Bush, or rather the vision that the neo-cons in Washington have for the Indian sub-continent<\/A>.   Mr Singh, regrettably, has advanced their cause at the expense of the Indian people.   For now, at least.   Will the world’s largest bourgeois democracy rest content with being a passive and docile client of Washington?   Or, will awakening nationalisms put paid to America’s ambitions to acquire both a huge and pliant market and a nuclear-armed bulwark against China?<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Manmohan Singh’s Washington visit may have made a splash in America’s media for 24 hours or so, but it was 3-ring flop back home.   In fact, a few more triumphs like this, and Mr Singh may be out of a job.   Not only is the opposition BJP calling for his head,  prominent members of his ruling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1428],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marxisminternationstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/marxisminternational\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}