Been a witness to the drama over the Indo-US nuclear deal? I have.
Our politics has hit a nadir. To understand that, you need to simply read the following five lines:
- Congress-led UPA government negotiated the Indo-US nuclear deal, so it supports it
- Left hates anything that has letters ‘U and S’ placed consecutively and thus opposes it
- BJP-led NDA is in the opposition and did not bring the deal, so it opposes it
- Samajwadi party and smaller parties wants to keep BJP at bay, so they support the UPA
- Other parties hate Congress and are worried that Muslims oppose the deal and thus oppose the deal
At a time when the country’s energy security appears far from comfortable, these are the reasons our politicians don’t want to discuss such an important piece of legislation. It is not surprising that none of the so-called leaders have had the gall to utter out opposition after the nuances of the deal were finally revealed when the text of the India-specific agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was ‘leaked’. The government’s role too has been far from clean but which leader or party has it in to engage the government into sensible debate??
The way our system is and leaders are, I sometimes feel that the guys who attacked the Indian parliament in December 2001 were not terrorists but frustrated Indians.
