I have published about a half dozen or more articles, mainly in The Statesman‘s Editorial Page, on the India-US Nuclear Deal, e.g. “Imperialism Redux”14 March 2006, “Towards an Energy Policy” 2 April 2006, “India’s Energy Interests” 27-28 August 2006, “Need for Clarity”, 19 August 2007. One of my main complaints has been that the Prime Minister and his acolytes seem to have failed to do a proper cost-benefit analysis of the whole thing. The same currency-risk that made the Dabhol-Enron project instantly unviable is also faced a fortiori in the idea of importing nuclear fuel and reactors. The Finance Minister and Finance Secretary who failed to calculate that currency risk in the former project, and hence caused its failure, have now failed again as PM and Planning Commission chief while advocating the latter project. Is the Indian rupee destined to depreciate in the long run? Of course it is: just look at the long run trends and compare our money supply growth rates and inflation rates with those of the USA or EU. The cost of imported nuclear power in India must be recalculated under different scenarios for the exchange-rate of the Indian rupee including e.g. a 20% depreciation.
It is not as if the Government of India is ignorant of what Cost-Benefit Analysis is supposed to be! For example, look up
“*Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions* * *THE INDIAN ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES (PROBATIONERS’ FINAL EXAMINATION) REGULATIONS, 1955* * *In pursuance of rule 7 of the Indian Administrative Service (Probation) Rules, 1954, the Central Government, in consultation with the State Governments and the Union Public Service Commission, hereby makes the following regulations, namely* *1. Short title:- These regulations may be called the Indian Administrative Service (Probationers’ Final Examination) Regulations, 1955.* *2. Definition:- 2(1) In these regulations, unless the context otherwise requires,-* *(a) `Academay’ (sic) means Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration;* *(b) [ ];* *(c) `Director’ means the Director of the Academy; and * *(d) `Schedule’ means a Schedule appended to these regulations.* *2(2) All other words and expressions used in these regulations and not defined shall have the meanings respectively assigned to them in the Indian Administrative Service (Probation) Rules, 1954.* *3. Final examination.- 3(1) Every probationer shall, at or about the end of the period of training in the Academy appear at a final examination.* *3(2) The examination shall be conducted by the 4Director in the manner laid down in these regulations….4. PUBLIC ADMINSTRATION AND MANAGEMENT* *Essentials of Administration-Organisational Structure of Governments, Role of Civil Servants, Administrative Ethics and Accountability, Delegation and Decentralisation-District and Local Administration-Personal Administration, Police Administration-Jail Administration Panchayati Raj Administration- CalamityAdministration-Administration of Development and Welfare Programmes- Budget and Role of Audit and general financial principles-Role of District Officer/SDO-Conduct of Elections.* *Management and Organisation* *Behavioural Science Motivation, Leadership, Decision-Making, MBO, Management of Conflicts, Management of Change ,Transactional Analysis, -MIS-O&M & Work study-Pert-CPM, Time Management Methodology of Presentation of a subject-Financial Management Capital Budgeting, Discountal Cash Flow, Ratio Analysis, Project Formulation, Cost benefit Analysis,Project Evaluation Interpretation of Balance Sheets….” (emphasis added)
How come there has been none with the India-US nuclear deal then? I think we need a new more comprehensible term for Cost-Benefit Analysis, and that should be, most simply, its Hindi/Urdu equivalent: “Nuksaan-Faida Analysis”.
What is the estimated Nuksaan?
What is the estimated Faida?
How do they compare? It all becomes so much easier!
India-USA interests: Elements of a serious Indian foreign policy
by
Subroto Roy
First published in The Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article, Oct 30 2007
If there is a “natural alliance” between India and the United States, it arises to the extent that both are large democracies and more or less free societies that happen to be placed half way across the globe and pose no perceptible military threat to one another. The real long-term strategic and political dimensions of such an alliance are quite independent of the business interests driving the “nuclear deal” or selfish interests of the few million “elite” Indians who have fled to the USA as immigrants in recent decades. The interests of Indian immigrants in the USA and interests of the vast masses in India are, after all, quite distinct. Also, America derives most if its own energy not from nuclear reactors but from abundant hydroelectric resources. If the nuclear deal has been ill-conceived and fails in implementation at any stage, India will not import expensive nuclear reactors but can still learn much from the USA in developing hydroelectric power which constitutes India’s greatest energy potential as well.
China and Pakistan
Key strategic interests of India and the USA are fully convergent in East Asia, especially in respect of Communist China. But in West Asia, American attitudes and actions towards the Muslim world, specifically the invasion and occupation of Iraq and now a possible assault on Iran, have been deeply disconcerting for India which has some 120 million Muslim citizens.
It is not a coincidence that Pakistan, an overtly religious Muslim state, has had a marriage of convenience with Communist China, an overtly atheistic anti-religious state. Both have been militarist dictatorships that have seen democratic India as a strategic adversary, especially over territorial claims. It was Pakistan that facilitated President Nixon’s desired opening to Communist China and later permitted President Reagan’s attack on the soft underbelly of the USSR in the Afghan civil war (an attack in which China participated too). With the USSR’s collapse, the USA removed its main strategic adversary only to be left with two new adversaries: Islamic fundamentalism in the short run and China in the long run!
Indian diplomacy can credit a rare (indeed exceptional) success in having warned the USA from the early 1990s onwards of the dangers brewing in the jihadist camps in Pakistan sponsored by the ISI. The US Government has now declassified its assessments of those dangers and what it tried to do as early as 1995 and as late as 2000 through the Saudis with the Taliban’s Mullah Omar ~ who refused to hand over Osama Bin Laden to Saudi Arabia and openly spoke of plans for revenge against American interests. With a continuing Cold-War mindset, US policy-makers thought state-actors like Saddam Hussein were a graver risk to Israel than non-state or pan-state actors like Osama could be to the American mainland. Having distracted itself with Saddam, the US Government’s response to Osama has been far too much far too late ~ the maddened bull chasing the matador’s cape, in Stephen Holmes’s recent metaphor.
Pakistan’s consistent motivation was one of gaining advantage with the Americans in the hope of undermining India, and indeed the nexus created in Washington by Pakistan’s bureaucrats, politicians and military over decades has been the envy of all lobbyists. But Pakistan overplayed its hand, and once the 9/11 genie was let out of the bottle it could not be put back in again. Meanwhile, Pakistan allowing Gwadar port to become a haven for China’s Navy would have obvious new strategic repercussions.
American interests in West Asia are to protect Israel, to protect trade-routes and to defend against non-state or pan-state terrorism. American interests in East Asia are to protect Japan, South Korea and Taiwan from communist attack, to protect trade-routes and to defend against new terrorism arising from places like Indonesia or the Philippines. All American interests in Asia would be facilitated by appearance of genuine multiparty democracy and free societies in China and Pakistan.
China as a two-party or multi-party democracy and a free society, even on the Taiwan-model, is unlikely to be an expansionist militarist aggressor in the way it has been as a dictatorship and unfree society. Communist China in the early 21st Century makes the same outrageous unlawful claims on Indian territory as it did half a century ago. Only the USA came to India’s assistance in a tangible way when Communist China attacked in Ladakh and Arunachal in the late months of 1962. John Kenneth Galbraith was President Kennedy’s Ambassador in New Delhi and his memoirs tell the tale of the landings of C-130 aircraft in Kolkata carrying infantry weapons, light artillery and quartermaster stores for the beleaguered Indian Army in Tezpur and Leh.
Nehru, Krishna Menon and India’s whole political and diplomatic leadership revealed gross incompetence as did the Army’s top brass. Indian Communists virtually betrayed the country. The Chinese massed in the Chumbi Valley near Nathu La, and had they attacked all the way to Siliguri, India’s North East would have been cut off. As a demonstration, the Chinese in division strength took and held the whole of Arunachal for a month, withdrawing before there could be anyIndian attempt to retaliate or cut supply lines. The geography has not changed in fifty years. What can yet change is the ideology, away from the communism that has ruined China’s great people, to a new and bold commitment to liberal democracy and the Rule of Law.
As for Pakistan, its people under crude military rule have hardly allowed themselves to become the source of Muslim culture that Iqbal had dreamt of. Pakistan today is not a place even the most ardent pro-Pakistani person in Jammu & Kashmir can find very appealing or inspiring. If there was multiparty democracy and a free society in which the military had a normal small role of defence (as opposed to a large purportedly offensive role against India), Pakistan could calm down from its neuroses and become a normal country for the first time~ one in which the so-called “extremists” of today are transformed into a politically legitimate religious conservatism, who could seek to take power responsibly through the ballot box.
Neutrality
India should be a friendly neutral in the conflict between the West and Muslim world, doing whatever we can to bring better understanding between the two sides. Both have been invaders in Indian history, bringing both evil and good in their wake. India’s culture absorbed and assimilated their influences and became more resilient as a consequence. India also was a haven for Jews and Zoroastrians fleeing persecution. India as a country must condemn fanatical terrorist attacks on the West and bizarre reactionary attempts to return to a caliphate in the world of modern science. Equally, India must condemn vicious racist bombing and warfare unleashed by technologically advanced countries upon ancient societies and cultures struggling to enter the modern world in their own way.
As for the central issue of Israel in Palestine, Martin Buber (1878-1965), the eminent Zionist scholar and philosopher of Judaism, said to Rabindranath Tagore in 1926 that the Jewish purpose should be one of “pursuing the settlement effort in Palestine in agreement, nay, alliance with the peoples of the East, so as to erect with them together a great federative structure, which might learn and receive from the West whatever positive aims and means might be learnt and received from it, without, however, succumbing to the influence of its inner disarray and aimlessness.” If India could guide the region towards such a “great federative structure” of reason and tranquillity, while encouraging democracy in China and Pakistan, the aim of our “natural alliance” with the United States half way across the globe would have been fulfilled.
(Author’s Note September 3 2008: This article “Need for Clarity” published in The Statesman last year was one of several I have published on the subject; see also, for example, “Towards an Energy Policy”, “India’s Energy Interests” , “Against Quackery” all published first in The Statesman in 2006 and 2007; also “India and ‘Energy Security'” which was my lecture to a KAF conference on the subject. It seems quite prescient in that it anticipated by a few months the “secret” letter from the US Executive Branch to the Legislative Branch, released by the Washington Post today . India’s UPA Government has put forward a junior spokesman from the Congress Party to waffle around with a purported explanation. )
Need for Clarity
A poorly drafted treaty driven by business motives is a recipe for international misunderstanding
First published in The Sunday Statesman, August 19 2007, Editorial Page Special Article
by
SUBROTO ROY
Confusion prevails over the Indo-US Nuclear Deal. Businessmen, bureaucrats, politicians, diplomats, scientists and now the public at large have all joined in the cacophony in the last two years.
On Wednesday August 15, America’s foreign ministry made the clearest most unequivocal statement possible as to the official American Government interpretation of the Indo-US nuclear deal: “The proposed 123 agreement has provisions in it that in an event of a nuclear test by India, then all nuclear co-operation is terminated, as well as there is provision for return of all materials, including reprocessed material covered by the agreement” (Sean McCormack). Yet our Prime Minister had told Parliament two days earlier: “The agreement does not in any way affect India’s right to undertake future nuclear tests, if it is necessary”. What is going on? Our politics are in uproar, and it has been suggested in these pages that the country go to a General Election to allow the people to speak on the matter. Clearly, we need some clarity.
Let us start at the beginning. How did it all originate? The private US nuclear industry prevailed upon India’s government bureaucrats and businessmen over several years that nuclear power is the way forward to solving India’s “infrastructure” problems. They would sell us, in words of the Manmohan-Montek Planning Commission’s energy adviser, “six to eight lightwater reactors” (especially as they may not be able to sell these anywhere else). Our usual prominent self-seeking retired bureaucrats started their waffling about the importance of “infrastructure”.
Then Manmohan Singh felt his foreign travels as PM could be hardly complete without a fife-and-drum visit to the White House. But before he could do so, Dabhol would have to be cleared up since American business in India was on a self-moratorium until GE and Bechtel were paid settlements of some $140-160 million each by the Governments of India and Maharashtra. GE’s CEO for India kindly said afterwards “India is an important country to GE’s global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy”.
Also, before Manmohan’s USA trip, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official Washington lobbyist and spent half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the deal. (“Why?” would be a good question.)
So Dr Singh was able to make his White House visit, accompanied by US business lobbies saying the nuclear deal can generate $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone. It is only when business has lubricated politics in America that so much agreement about the India-deal could arise. The “bottom-line” is that six to eight reactors must be sold to India, whatever politics and diplomacy it takes.
Now Dr Singh is not a PM who is a Member of the Lower House of Parliament commanding its confidence. He says his Government constitutes the Executive and can sign treaties on India’s behalf. This is unwise. If he signs a treaty and then the Congress Party loses the next General Election, a new Executive Government can use his same words to rescind the same treaty. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. One reason we are so confused is that India has not signed very many bilateral treaties, and there is barely a noted specialist in international law anywhere in the country. Dr Singh’s original mentor, PN Haksar, had gone about getting a treaty signed with the USSR back in 1971 which tided us over a war, though the USSR itself collapsed before that treaty ended.
Signing a treaty is much more than signing an international MOU. It requires a national consensus or a least a wide and deep understanding on the part of the public and the political class as to what necessitates the treaty. That plainly does not exist at present. Most people in India do not even know how nuclear power is generated, nor how small and insignificant nuclear power has been in India.
Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require “highly enriched” uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.
India’s 14 “civilian” nuclear reactors presently produce less than 4% of our total power. 70% of our power arises from burning fossil fuels, mainly coal. Much of the rest arises from hydro. We have vast hydroelectric potential in the North and Northeast but it would take a lot of serious political, administrative and civil engineering effort to organise all that, and there would not be any nice visits to Washington or Paris involved for politicians and bureaucrats.
Simple arithmetic says that even if all our principal energy sources stayed constant and only our tiny nuclear power sector grew by 100%, that would still hardly increase by very much our energy output overall. Placing a couple of expensive modern lightwater reactors around Delhi, a couple around Mumbai and a few other metros will, however, butter already buttered bread quite nicely and keep all those lifts and ACs running.
The agreed text of the “treaty” looks, from a legal standpoint, quite sloppily and hurriedly written ~ almost as if each side has cut and paste its own preferred terms in different places with a nod to the other side. For example, there is mention of “WMD” initially which is repeated as “weapons of mass destruction” just a little later. There is solemn mention of the “Government of India” and “Government of the United States of America” as the “Parties”, but this suddenly becomes merely “United States” and “India” in the middle and then reverts again to the formal usage.
Through the sloppiness comes scope for different interpretations. The Americans have said: try not to test, you don’t need to, we don’t test any more, and you have to know that if you do test, this deal is over, in fact it gets reversed. We have said, okay, we won’t test, and if we do test we know it is over with you but that does not mean it is over with others. Given such sloppy diplomacy and treaty-making, the scope for mutual misunderstanding, even war, remains immense long after all the public Indian moneys have found their way into private pockets worldwide. Will a future President Jeb Bush or Chelsea Clinton send F-22 bombers to bomb India’s nuclear facilities because India has carried out a test yet declined to return American equipment? Riding a tiger is not something generally to be recommended.
The answer to our present conundrum must be patience and the fullest transparency. What is the rush? If it is good or bad for us to buy six or eight new American reactors now, it will remain good or bad to do so a year or two from now after everyone has had a thorough think about everything that is involved. What the Manmohan-Montek Planning Commission needed to do first of all was a thorough cost-benefit analysis of India’s energy requirements but such elementary professionalism has been sorely lacking among our economists for decades.
First published in India’s Energy Security edited by Anant Sudarshan and Ligia Noronha, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, New Delhi 2007
“On the Political Economy of India’s Energy Policy: One Citizen’s Viewpoint”
by
Subroto Roy
For the idea of “energy security” to have meaning, “energy insecurity” must hold meaning as well. Looking back a generation, the average American, European and Japanese citizen became anxious and insecure when the cartel power of the oil exporting countries was first exercised, and energy prices quadrupled. The idea of the US Government accumulating a “strategic reserve” of petroleum originated due to the oil crisis, and amounted to no more than a buffer-stock or commodity price-stabilisation scheme so “cheap gasoline” could be had always, and lifestyles would not be suddenly inconvenienced, and hence presidential popularity ratings would not suddenly drop.
In many ways energy insecurity has been a creation of bad design. Hawaii is a good example of this. Hawaii’s renowned climate is cooled by the magnificent trade-winds which blow all year long except in September. Architecture suitable to those trade-winds would have created homes a few stories high with windows which could be opened. Instead, Honolulu has become a city of high-rises and skyscrapers in the middle of the Pacific Ocean — many with New York-style permanently closed windows and centralised airconditioning.
Energy Insecurity, and hence Energy Security, may be notions mostly relevant to advanced Western economies. North American, European and Japanese homes, lifestyles, architectures and urban sprawls are all highly capital-intensive and inelastically dependant on domestic or imported energy. The reason a vague undefined notion of “Energy Security” tends to make New Delhi anxious is because many inside the Delhi Beltway live in dreamlands or fantasy-worlds where they would like to imitate Western lifestyles in their personal lives. But New Delhi is not Europe or America and certainly India is not New Delhi.
There are hundreds of millions of Indians in rural India. What is the appropriate National Energy Policy for them? It quite simply is for there to be genuine electrification of India’s 600,000 villages (where more than 70% of the rural Indian population still have no electric lighting even according to Government data), as well as better trains, better all-weather feeder-roads to reach bus routes and primary schools, and conditions to arise for technological change and normal prosperity among ordinary people, so those who are today transporting a whole family of four on a bicycle, are able in a few years to do so on a motor-scooter, and some years after that perhaps in a small private car. Economic theory speaks of preferences, resources and technologies. Preferences define and give rise to the demand-side; resources and technologies define and give rise to the supply-side. Relative prices (which include interest-rates, reflecting the force of the present relative to the future) tend to intermediate equilibria between demand and supply conditions. In policy-making, private preferences for public goods and services must somehow become translated through a tolerable political process into reasonable public preferences. It must have seemed a good idea privately to someone to create skyscrapers with closed windows in Honolulu forgetting the trade winds and ignoring the energy-dependence of the Hawaiian Islands, yet in retrospect that may seem to have been publicly unwise. Similarly, India is a coal-abundant coal-exporting and diesel-importing country yet we got rid of all our steam locomotives and replaced these with diesel engines – if there were enough reasons to do so, I at least remain ignorant of what they were. One problem with our energy policy-making that has emerged in the current nuclear deal-making with American businessmen and politicians, is that it has seemed to lack rational assessments being made of relative costs and benefits in the Indian case of nuclear/fossil fuel/renewable energy, especially hydroelectric energy. Indeed it reveals the same lack of transparency as other policy-making in this country – like the $12 billion worth of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus bought for our bankrupt nationalized airlines.
Moving from preference-formation to resources and technologies, it will be recalled that no economist of any school of thought anywhere ever backed the Club of Rome/“Limits to Growth” idea a generation ago that mankind was doomed in some sense to run out of resources. There are always alternatives, each with a relative cost attached to it, and there are always new and unpredictable opportunities and ingenuities arising which dynamically change the set of alternatives on offer at a given time. Prices and costs tend to adjust when possible to make myriad individual decisions consistent with one another, and in fact, futures, forward and option markets for petroleum products are among the most active and well-traded that there are in the world. Design improvements in nuclear reactors will also improve productivity; e.g. “fast breeder” reactors “breed” more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do. We in India also have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction.
Coming to the nuclear deal, the plausible part of the Government of India’s official line on the Indo-US nuclear deal is that removing these international restrictions will — through importation of new technologies, inputs, fuel etc — improve the functioning of the 14 existing nuclear plants that are going to be designated as “civilian”. However, those purchasing decisions involved in enhancing India’s efficiency gains must be made by the Government’s nuclear scientists on technical grounds of improving the working of our existing nuclear infrastructure.
It would be a different animal altogether to be purchasing new nuclear reactors on a turnkey basis from American, French or any other foreign businessmen in a purported attempt to improve India’s “energy security”. The central question over such massive foreign purchases no longer would be the technical one of using the Indo-US deal to improve efficiency or productivity of our existing inefficient and even crippled nuclear infrastructure. Instead it would become a question of calculating social costs and benefits of our newly investing in nuclear power relative to other sources like hydroelectric power. The contribution of nuclear power to India’s electricity production has been close to negligible. Among India’s energy sources, the largest growth-potential has remained hydroelectric. Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100% under the deal that Dr Manmohan Singh and Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia have been promoting, that would still make up less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced.
In 2004, the International Energy Agency’s estimated that the new energy capacity required by rising economic growth in 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430 GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources like solar or wind power. Because gas prices are expected to remain low worldwide, construction of new nuclear reactors for electricity will mostly remain unprofitable. By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700 GW, of which only 150 GW is expected from new nuclear plants which in any case will replacing existing plants due to be retired. I am afraid the thought cannot be avoided that a proper cost-benefit analysis may reveal that the reason why potential American, French and other sellers of new nuclear reactors to India are becoming so keen on India using civilian nuclear energy is that they are unable to sell these reactors under free market principles elsewhere in the world economy. There is enough circumstantial evidence that the current nuclear deal-making has been promoted mostly by big business lobbies and has had little to do with anything else. The nuclear deal was promoted by the US-India Business Council and the US-India CEO Forum. The Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official lobbyist in Washington, and went about spending half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the nuclear deal. After President Bush’s visit to India, the US Foreign Commercial Service reportedly said American engineering firms, equipment suppliers and contractors faced a $1,000 billion opportunity in India, and the US Chamber of Commerce said the nuclear deal can cause $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone.
If the Indo-US nuclear deal helps India improve or maintain its existing nuclear infrastructure, well and good. If in fact the underlying motivation of the local and foreign business lobbies driving the deal has been to sell India nuclear reactors on a turnkey basis at a time when nuclear energy is uneconomical elsewhere in the world because of low gas prices, then India’s ordinary citizens may demand to know from the Government whether the deal is principally aimed at allowing such importation of new nuclear reactors, and if so, why such an expensive alternative is being considered. Thus must include a realisation that while the transactions, organisation and political costs of getting new hydroelectric power investments off the ground are high, it is hydroelectric and not nuclear power where India’s real future potential exists. As a general rule, I put it to you that we need to be less worried about “Energy Security” anywhere and more worried about thoughtless irresponsible corrupt governments everywhere. There is no shortage of energy or resources as such anywhere in the world; what should be making us feel insecure is the shortage of wisdom in political decision-making. That there is everywhere.
First published in The Sunday Statesman, August 27 2006, The Statesman August 28 2006, Editorial Page Special Article
Americans are shrewd and practical people in commercial matters, and expect the same of people they do business with. Caveat emptor, “let the buyer beware”, is the motto they expect those on the other side of the table to be using. Let us not think they are doing us favours in the nuclear deal ~ they are grown-ups looking after their interests and naturally expect we shall look after our own and not expect charity while doing business. Equally, let us not blame the Americans if we find in later years (long after Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have exited from India’s stage) that the deal has been implemented in a bad way for our masses of ordinary people.
That said, there is a remarkable disjoint between India’s national energy interests (nuclear interests in particular), and the manner in which the nuclear deal is being perceived and taken to implementation by the two sides. There may be a fundamental gap between the genuine positive benefits the Government of India says the deal contains, and the motivations American businessmen and through them Indian businessmen have had for lobbying American and Indian politicians to support it. An atmosphere of being at cross-purposes has been created, where for example Manmohan Singh is giving answers to questions different from the questions we may want to be asking Montek Ahluwalia. The fundamental gap between what is being said by our Government and what may be intended by the businessmen is something anyone can grasp, though first we shall need some elementary facts.
In 2004, the International Energy Agency estimated the new energy capacity required by rising economic growth in 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources like solar or wind power. Because gas prices are expected to remain low worldwide, construction of new nuclear reactors for electricity will be unprofitable. By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700GW, of which only 150GW is expected from new nuclear plants, which will be in any case replacing existing plants due to be retired. Rational choice between different energy sources depends on costs determined by history and geography. Out of some 441 civilian reactors worldwide, France has 59 and these generate 78 per cent of its electricity, the rest coming from hydro. Japan has 54 reactors, generating 34% of its electricity from them. The USA has 104 reactors but generates only 20 per cent of its electricity from them, given its vast alternative sources of power like hydro. In India as of 2003, installed power generating capacity was 107,533.3MW, of which 71 per cent came from burning fuels. Among India’s energy sources, the largest growth-potential is hydroelectric, which does not involve burning fuels ~ gravity moves water from the mountains to the oceans, and this force is harnessed for generation. Our hydro potential, mostly in the North and North-East, is some 150,000MW but our total installed hydro capacity with utilities was only 26,910MW (about 18 per cent of potential). Our 14 civilian nuclear reactors produced merely 4 per cent or less of the electricity being consumed in the country. Those 14 plants will come under “international safeguards” by 2014 under the nuclear deal.
It is extremely likely the international restrictions our existing nuclear plants have been under since the 1970s have hindered if not crippled their functioning and efficiency. At the same time, the restrictions may have caused us to be innovative too. Nuclear power arises from fission of radioactive uranium, plutonium or thorium. India has some 8 million tonnes of monazite deposits along the seacoast of which half may be mined, to yield 225,000 tonnes of thorium metal; we have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction. Almost all nuclear energy worldwide today arises from uranium of which there are practically unlimited reserves. Fission of a uranium atom produces 10 million times the energy produced by combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. Gas and fossil fuels may be cheap and in plentiful supply worldwide for generations to come but potential for cheap nuclear energy seems practically infinite. The uranium in seawater can satisfy mankind’s total electricity needs for 7 million years. There is more energy in the uranium impurity present in coal than can arise from actually burning the coal. There is plenty of uranium in granite. None of these become profitable for centuries because there is so much cheap uranium extractable from conventional ores. Design improvements in reactors will also improve productivity; e.g. “fast breeder” reactors “breed” more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do. India has about 95,000 tonnes of uranium metal that may be mined to yield about 61,000 tonnes net for power generation. Natural uranium is 99.3 per cent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 per cent of the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power generation requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” to be created in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 per cent to 4 to 5 percent. (Nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium with more than 90 per cent of U-235.) Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In a reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines generating electricity. While there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, almost impossible to dispose of.
The plausible part of the Government of India’s official line on the Indo-US nuclear deal is that removing the international restrictions will ~ through importation of new technologies, inputs, fuel etc ~ improve functioning of our 14 existing civilian plants. That is a good thing. Essentially, the price being paid for that improvement is our willingness to commit that those 14 plants will not be used for military purposes. Fair enough: even if we might become less innovative as a result, the overall efficiency gains as a result of the deal will add something to India’s productivity. However, those purchasing decisions involved in enhancing India’s efficiency gains must be made by the Government’s nuclear scientists on technical grounds of improving the working of our existing nuclear infrastructure.
It is a different animal altogether to be purchasing new nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis from American or any other foreign businessmen in a purported attempt to improve India’s “energy security”. (Lalu Yadav has requested a new reactor for Bihar, plus of course Delhi will want one, etc.) The central question over such massive foreign purchases would no longer be the technical one of using the Indo-US deal to improve efficiency or productivity of our existing nuclear infrastructure. Instead it would become a question of calculating social costs and benefits of our investing in nuclear power relative to other sources like hydroelectric power. Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100 per cent under the Manmohan-Montek deal-making, that would mean less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced.
This is where the oddities arise and a disjoint becomes apparent between what the Government of India is saying and what American and Indian businessmen have been doing. A “US-India Business Council” has existed for thirty years in Washington as “the premier business advocacy organization promoting US commercial interests in India.… the voice of the American private sector investing in India”. Before the nuclear or any other deals could be contemplated with American business, the USIBC insisted we pay up for Dabhol contracted by a previous Congress Government. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board ~ or rather, its sovereign guarantor the Government of India ~ duly paid out at least $140-$160 million each to General Electric and Bechtel Corporations in “an amicable settlement” of the Dabhol affair. Afterwards, General Electric’s CEO for India was kind enough to say “India is an important country to GE’s global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy”.
Also, a new “US-India CEO Forum” then came about. For two Governments to sponsor private business via such a Forum was “unprecedented”, as noted by Washington’s press during Manmohan Singh’s visit in July 2005. America’s foreign ministry announced it saying: “Both our governments have agreed that we should create a high-level private sector forum to exchange business community views on key economic priorities…” The American side includes heads of AES Corporation, Cargill Inc., Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Honeywell, McGraw-Hill, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ltd, PepsiCo, Visa International and Xerox Corporation. The Indian side includes heads of Tata Group, Apollo Hospitals Group, Bharat Forge Ltd, Biocon India Group, HDFC, ICICI One Source, Infosys, ITC Ltd, Max India Group and Reliance Industries. Presiding over the Indian side has been Montek Ahluwalia, Manmohan’s trusted aide ~ and let it be remembered too that the Ahluwalias were Manmohan’s strongest backers in his failed South Delhi Lok Sabha bid. (Indeed it is not clear if the Ahluwalias have been US or Indian residents in recent years, and if it is the former, the onus is on them to clear any perception of conflict of interest arising in regard to roles regarding the nuclear deal or any other official Indo-US business.)
Also, before the Manmohan visit, the Confederation of Indian Industry registered as an official lobbyist in Washington, and went about spending half a million dollars lobbying American politicians for the nuclear deal. After the Manmohan visit, the US Foreign Commercial Service reportedly said American engineering firms, equipment suppliers and contractors faced a $1,000 billion (1 bn =100 crore) opportunity in India. Before President Bush’s visit to India in March 2006, Manmohan Singh signed vast purchases of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, as well as large weapons’ deals with France and Russia. After the Bush visit, the US Chamber of Commerce said the nuclear deal can cause $100 billion worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone. What is going on?
Finally, the main aspect of Manmohan Singh’s address to America’s legislature had to do with agreeing with President Bush “to enhance Indo-US cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear technology”. What precisely does this mean? If it means the Indo-US nuclear deal will help India improve or maintain its existing nuclear infrastructure, well and good. There may be legitimate business for American and other foreign companies in that cause, which also helps India make the efficiency and productivity gains mentioned. Or has the real motivation for the American businessmen driving the deal (with the help of the “CEO Forum” etc) been to sell India nuclear reactors on a turn-key basis (in collaboration with private Indian businessmen) at a time when building new nuclear reactors is unprofitable elsewhere in the world because of low gas prices? India’s citizens may demand to know from the Government whether the Manmohan-Montek deal-making is going to cause importation of new nuclear reactors, and if so, why such an expensive alternative is being considered (relative to e.g. India’s abundant hydroelectric potential) when it will have scant effect in satisfying the country’s energy needs and lead merely to a worsening of our macroeconomic problems. Both Manmohan Singh and Montek Ahluwalia have been already among those to preside over the growth of India’s macroeconomic problems through the 1980s and 1990s.
Lastly, an irrelevant distraction should be gotten out of the way. Are we a “nuclear weapons” state? Of course we are, but does it matter to anything but our vanity? Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had control over vastly more nuclear weapons and they declared together twenty years ago: “A nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought”, which is how the Cold War started to come to an end. We need to remind ourselves that India and Pakistan are large, populous countries with hundreds of millions of materially poor, ill-informed citizens, weak tax-bases, humongous internal and external public debts (i.e. debt owed by the Government to domestic and foreign creditors), non-investment grade credit- ratings in world financial markets, massive annual fiscal deficits, inconvertible currencies, nationalized banks, and runaway printing of paper-money. Discussing nuclear or other weapon-systems to attack one other with is mostly a pastime of our cowardly, irresponsible and yes, corrupt, elites.
Note: This article may have initiated the public debate on the economics of the Indo-US nuclear deal. It was published as a Special Article on the Editorial Page of The Sunday Statesman of April 2 2006 but it failed to be uploaded at the website http://www.thestatesman.net because there had been a fire on March 31 2006. The politicians who led the parliamentary debate in 2006 subsequently made reference to it.
See also republished elsewhere here e.g. “India’s Energy Interests”, “India and Energy Security”, “Need for Clarity”/”From Confusion to Clarity”, “Against Quackery”, “Jimmy Carter and the Indo-US Nuclear Deal””, NuksaanFaida Analysis”.
“Towards an Energy Policy”
by Subroto Roy
First published in
The Sunday Statesman, Editorial Page Special Article 2 April 2006
When was the last time we heard a thorough, well informed debate in Parliament about India’s long-term energy needs and policy-alternatives? The answer is never. Just as Pakistan tends to be run by Islamabad’s generals, we tend to be run by New Delhi’s bureaucrats; both are a legacy of the Raj which was run by small numbers of pompous civil servants and soldiers. Bureaucrats keep as much decision-making information as they can to themselves, give it to Parliament only under duress and then too in garbled opaque form, and share it voluntarily with the public never at all. A bureaucrat of conscience who shares vital information transparently becomes a “whistleblower”, and may risk his/her life and career because assorted mafias invariably surround all government contracting, and, like vampire bats, cannot stand the light of day shed upon them.
The problem with the Manmohan/Montek deal-making with the USA on behalf of India’s people has less to do with rational assessments not having been made of the relative costs and benefits of e.g. nuclear/fossil fuel/renewable energy, as it has to do with the fact it reflects the same lack of transparency (and is accompanied by the same politically correct propaganda) as has existed in other policy-making – like the $12 billion worth of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus bought for our bankrupt nationalized airlines, or spending untold billions of borrowed dollars on new weapons from France, Russia, Britain or whomever to fight unknown enemies in unimagined wars, or throwing newly printed paper-money at every government project that any fool or knave cares to mention.
To be fair, the UPA/Communist dispensation of the public’s largesse is no worse than that of the NDA/RSS. Both are part of New Delhi’s own “Inside-the-Beltway” syndrome, and turn up at the same celebrity wedding-receptions and iftehar parties. Neither minds too much when the other is in power so long as they can keep their government accommodation. Our fundamental political problem may be the absence of any serious party of Left or of Right which is secular, scientific, liberal, nationalist, clean, law-abiding, and fiscally prudent.
Since no national debate on energy-policy has been offered by New Delhi, ordinary citizens will have to create such a debate for themselves. What follows constitutes a few of the barest facts needed to start such an analysis of India’s alternative energy scenarios and their respective costs.
Hydroelectric power does not involve burning any fuels. Instead, the gravitational force of the movement of water from the mountains to the oceans is harnessed to generate electricity. But hydroelectric projects (like the Narmada Dam) can displace people, who must be then compensated and resettled. Burning of organic “fossil fuels” like coal, gas and oil, causes atmospheric oxygen to turn into carbon dioxide, which may affect climate in unknown ways. In 2004, the International Energy Agency’s estimated the new energy capacity worldwide required by rising economic growth in the year 2020 will derive 1400 GW from burning coal (half of it in China and India), 470 GW from burning oil, 430GW from hydro, and 400 GW from renewable sources (like solar or wind power). On the Agency’s assumptions, gas prices will remain low, making construction of new nuclear plants for electricity uneconomical. By 2030, new energy expected to be required worldwide is 4700GW, of which only 150GW is expected from new nuclear plants — which will be replacing existing nuclear plants due to be retired. (Such is the scenario before any new nuclear plants were going to be exported by e.g. USA to India).
Now the fission of an atom of uranium produces perhaps 10 million times the energy produced by combustion of an atom of carbon from coal. Gas and fossil fuels may be cheap and in plentiful supply worldwide for generations to come but the potential for cheap energy from nuclear sources seems practically infinite. Nuclear power can arise from fission of radioactive uranium, plutonium or thorium. India has perhaps 8 million tonnes of monazite deposits along the seacoast of which half may be mined, to yield 225,000 tonnes of thorium metal; we have one innovatively designed thorium reactor under construction. But almost all nuclear energy worldwide today arises from uranium, and there are practically unlimited reserves of that. There is so much uranium in sea water that mankind’s total electricity needs can be satisfied for 7 million years. There is more energy in the uranium impurity present in coal than can arise from actually burning the coal. There is plenty of uranium in granite. None of these sources will become profitable for centuries because there is so much cheap uranium possible to be extracted from conventional ores. In 2001, uranium cost about US$20 per kg or so, translating to US$0.0004 per kwh of electricity. The known reserves of uranium that can be profitably sold at $120 per kg are enough for at least a hundred years. Design improvements in reactors will also improve productivity; e.g. “fast breeder” reactors “breed” more fissile material than they use, and may get 100 times as much energy from a kilogram of uranium as existing reactors do. India has about 95,000 tonnes of uranium metal which may be mined to yield about 61,000 tonnes net for power generation.
Natural uranium is 99.3 percent of the U-238 isotope and 0.7 percent of the radioactive U-235 isotope. Nuclear power requires “enriched uranium” or “yellow cake” in which U-235 has been increased from 0.7 percent to 4 to 5 percent, and that “separation” process is expensive. (Nuclear bombs require highly enriched uranium with more than 90% of U-235). Yellow cake is broken into small pieces, put in metal rods placed in bundles, which are then bombarded by neutrons causing fission. In nuclear bombs, the fission occurs in a small space, and the blast that results kills all life for miles around it by sucking up all the atmospheric oxygen, besides causing firestorms, shock waves and radioactivity. In a civilian reactor, the energy released turns water into steam, which moves turbines powering the generation of electricity. However, while there is no carbon dioxide “waste” as in burning fossil fuels, the “spent” rods of nuclear fuel and other products constitute grave radioactive waste, which is hard if not impossible to dispose of. Many countries like the USA just bury their nuclear waste in remote thinly populated desert areas.
Rational choice between energy sources depends on costs determined by history and geography. France has 59 of the 441 or so civilian nuclear reactors in the world, and generates 78% of its electricity from them, 22% from hydroelectricity. Japan has 54 reactors and generates 34% of its electricity from them. The USA has 104 reactors but generates only 20% of its electricity from them, principally because it has vast alternative sources of energy. In India, installed power generating capacity as of 2003 was 107,533.3MW, of which 71% was from burning fossil fuels. Hydroelectric potential is 150,000MWe. In 2003, total installed hydro capacity with utilities was 26,910MWe (about 18% of the potential). More than 70% of India’s hydroelectric potential is in the North and NorthEast regions put together.
India’s 14 nuclear reactors produce less than 4% of the total electricity being consumed in the country. Even if all other sources of electricity remained constant, and our civilian nuclear capacity alone was made to grow by 100% under the Manmohan-Montek deal with the USA, that would mean less than 8% of total Indian electricity produced. So the first question India’s citizens must ask is why such a fuss has been created about the Manmohan-Montek deal with America. Clearly, the Government of India must come wholly clean with all the facts and analysis it has available on the whole problem of India’s energy future in all its complexity and detail. If and when it does so, we may simply find that the fault lies not in the stars but in ourselves. Whether the US-India nuclear deal stands or falls, it will have scant effect in satisfying the country’s energy needs.
First published in The Statesman March 14 2006 Editorial Page Special Article
By Subroto Roy
If souls can transmigrate, so may souls of companies, and future historians might well look back and say that the new US-India “CEO Forum” heralded the modern rebirth of the East India Company. Like the old Company, the new Forum has many ambitious, competent people. The American side includes heads of AES Corporation, Cargill Inc., Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Honeywell, McGraw-Hill, Parsons Brinckerhoff Ltd, PepsiCo, Visa International and Xerox Corporation. The Indian side includes heads of Tata Group, Apollo Hospitals Group, Bharat Forge Ltd, Biocon India Group, HDFC, ICICI One Source, Infosys, ITC Ltd, Max India Group and Reliance Industries — all stalwarts of what Mr Kanu Sanyal’s Naxals would have termed India’s “comprador bourgeoisie”.
Business advocacy
Presiding over the Indian side has been Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s trusted confidante, Montek Singh Ahluwalia (whose family moved to the USA after 20 years in India). Indeed it may have been his idea to have a government-sponsored business initiative. A “US-India Business Council” has existed for thirty years in Washington as “the premier business advocacy organization promoting US commercial interests in India.… the voice of the American private sector investing in India”. But for both Governments to sponsor private business via the Forum was “unprecedented” as noted by Washington’s press during Dr Singh’s visit in July 2005. The State Department (America’s foreign ministry) announced it saying: “Both our governments have agreed that we should create a high-level private sector forum to exchange business community views on key economic priorities…”
The Forum seems to have gone well beyond exchanging business community views, and has had a clear impact in the sudden redefinition of the direction of India’s foreign, military and energy policy. When Dr Singh addressed America’s legislature, the main aspect of the speech he read there had to do with agreeing with the American President “to enhance Indo-US cooperation in the field of civilian nuclear technology”. And nuclear energy has suddenly begun to dominate India’s news and national political agenda — even though the 2503MW of nuclear power produced in the country accounts for merely 4% of our civilian energy needs, barely significant. But before nuclear or any other deals could be contemplated with American business, the Dabhol payouts were required to be made. The Maharashtra State Electricity Board — or rather, its sovereign guarantor the Government of India — paid out at least $140-$160 million each to General Electric and Bechtel Corporations in “an amicable settlement” of the Dabhol affair. (When is the last word going to be said on that?) Afterwards, General Electric’s CEO for India was kind enough to say “India is an important country to GE’s global growth. We look forward to working with our partners, customers, and State and Central Governments in helping India continue to develop into a leading world economy”.
A weak and corrupt Delhi
Such nice rhetoric was on close display during the deal-making leading up to and beyond President George W. Bush’s recent India visit. America’s Ambassadors are mostly political appointees and special friends of the President of the day; the present Ambassador to India is a prominent Texas businessman, and business has been driving American thinking with India all the way. After Dr Singh’s visit, the US Foreign Commercial Service reportedly said American engineering firms, equipment suppliers and contractors faced a $1000 bn (1 bn = 100 crore) opportunity in India. Before the Bush visit, Dr Singh signed vast purchases of commercial aircraft from Boeing and Airbus, as well as large weapons’ deals with France and Russia. After the Bush visit, the US Chamber of Commerce has said the nuclear deal can cause $100 bn worth of new American business in India’s energy-sector alone. Getting American legislators to agree will require “massive grassroots efforts” at lobbying politicians, saying that “energy-starved” India will now become open “to US investment in key areas from IT and telecom to pharmaceuticals and insurance”. Mr Bush’s foreign minister Condoleezza Rice (who has authored the political aspects of the new India-orientation) and her pointman Nicholas Burns have said, “we are suggesting India-specific amendments to the Atomic Energy Act of 1954… It’s a waiver authority … We are not seeking relief from US law for any country in the world except India and we don’t anticipate putting any country forward. So it is India specific.” India will separate by 2014 closely entwined civilian and military nuclear facilities and put 14 of 22 civilian nuclear reactors under international inspection.
Now the East India Company had not intended to rule India but ended up dictating to a weak and corrupt Delhi, waging wars across Bengal, the Deccan and North India, and inducing “regime change” all over the place among local satraps. In the modern context, the American Government and its businessman Ambassador to the Delhi Court have made it crystal-clear India’s support has been expected in the matter of American policy towards Iran. Dr Singh has been his own Foreign Minister, crafting his America policy aided by Mr Ahluwalia on one hand and Mr M. K. Narayanan on the other. None of the three has diplomatic, historical or foreign policy-making experience. Mr Narayanan is a retired officer of domestic counter-intelligence (which is traditionally Pakistan-specific). Dr Singh and Mr Ahluwalia are retired economic officials. None has ever outlined for public scrutiny any views on India’s history, politics or foreign policy in any book or essay. India’s historians and career diplomats (and not just the most loquacious and greedy ones) have been silenced. Yet this is a time when a well-respected Indian world figure (though unfortunately there may be none, except Zubin Mehta) could have brought Iran and Israel to the conference table together. Iran must recognise Israel and the two countries must exchange ambassadors if the present tension is not to degenerate into more war in our region. Israel needs to declare itself a nuclear weapons’ power and not be belligerent towards Muslims, and Iran could be allowed to pursue its nuclear research within reason. It is in India’s and Pakistan’s common interests to see that Jimmy Carter’s extension of the Monroe doctrine to include the Persian Gulf be replaced by the Zionist philosopher Martin Buber’s idea of a “federative structure” for the peoples of the East. Instead the reverse is happening.
What economics does say
Dr Singh and Mr Ahluwalia may say economics has been driving their new foreign policy. But what economics actually says is that Government should have nothing to do with any kind of business. Government should encourage competition in all avenues of economic activity and prevent or regulate monopoly, and also see to it that firms pay taxes they are due to pay. But that is it. It is as bad for Government to pamper organised business and organised labour with subsidies of any kind as it is to make enterprise difficult with red tape and hurdles. Businessmen are grown ups and should be allowed to freely risk their capital and make their profits or their losses without public intervention. Government’s role is to raise taxes and provide public goods and services properly. We need to remind ourselves that India is a large, populous country with hundreds of millions of materially poor ill-informed citizens, a weak tax-base, a humongous internal and external public debt (i.e. debt owed by the Government to domestic and foreign creditors), a non-investment grade credit-rating in world financial markets, massive annual fiscal deficits, an inconvertible currency, nationalized banks, and runaway printing of paper-money. There is plenty of serious economics that has yet to begin to be done in the country. New Delhi must wake up from its self-induced dreaming.
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