Indian Rupee falls to its lowest, since December 2002, with one US. dollar buying Rs. 48.03 yesterday
Washington D.C. - Just as the US-India civilian-nuclear deal (also named satirically as the ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal by famous political commentator and author Pat Buchanan) has cleared its last remaining hurdle, in the gullible United States Senate. As if synchronized with the nuclear deal the Indian rupee yesterday fell to its lowest point since December 2002, (Rs. 48.03 to one U.S. dollar) obviously weighed down by losses in the Mumbai stock exchange which has seen foreign funds pulling out U.S. $. 9.4 billion (yes 9.4 billion dollars) just in the year 2008, raising concerns on more foreign fund outflows.
Normally Indian currency, according to experts, correlates negatively with the Indian stock Sensex index with a six-month delay. All diaspora Sikhs therefore, ought to continue banking their foreign currency abroad and be chary of investing in India’s ‘dancing’ currency or it’s stock market, at this point in time, where among other negatives the armed Naxalite revolutionary movement is spreading like a prairie fire and has engulfed half of rural India (255 districts) where the writ of the Indian state just does not exist any more.
According to Financial experts that correlation means that it is likely that Mumbai Stock Exchange Sensex index will go down from it’s current (yesterday’s) 12, 081 points to below 5,000 in the next six months. Earlier this year the Sensex index had crossed the record 20, 000 points ceiling. Readers might remember that in June 1984 when that evil incarnate Prime minister Indira Gandhi (mother-in-law of Mrs. Sonia Gandhi) ordered the Indian Army June 1984 attack on the Darbar Sahib (‘Golden Temple’) complex in Amritsar, one U.S. dollar could buy only about six Indian rupees now it is being exchanged for 48 rupees. Some economic progress in twenty five years! Divine punishment perhaps!
More than three years after the U.S.-India nuclear deal was initially initialed by Indian Prime minister Manmohan Singh and President Bush, in July 2005, during their meeting in the White House (with thousands of SikhAmericans, worried about the safety of the Sikh Homeland of Punjab, protesting against it marching outside) the US-India civilian-nuclear deal seems to have cleared its last remaining hurdle in the U.S. Senate. A strong bipartisan majority in the US Congress, on the Hill, endorsed the deal a week ago on October 1st.
Supporters of the deal argue falsely that it will make a major contribution to India’s energy supply while bringing the country into the non-proliferation fold. They say perhaps correctly that it could cement a strategic partnership between the United States and India. Each of these claims requires some qualification. Proponents of the deal argue, first of all, that it will vastly increase India’s energy supplies, removing a major bottleneck in the country’s economic development. Increased access to nuclear technology and materials—especially uranium fuel—will enable a significant expansion of India’s nuclear-power industry. However, this expansion will occur from an extremely low base. Nuclear power accounts for only 2.5% of India’s energy supply at present, although this is targeted—perhaps over-ambitiously—to rise to 25% by 2050. Far more important, in the larger scheme of things, are the government’s plans to expand massively India’s capacity to generate power from coal and natural gas.
Apologists (and lobbyists) for India falsely argue that the deal will enhance India’s energy supply without boosting India’s nuclear-weapons program or, more generally, without permanently damaging international nuclear non-proliferation efforts. Nuclear trade between members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and India will be limited to civilian-use technologies and equipment, and India has agreed to allow international inspectors to monitor some of its nuclear facilities – how many has not been spelled out. But even if no potentially dual-use nuclear equipment finds its way into the military’s hands as it did in May 1974, the ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ Indo-U.S. deal will indirectly aid India’s nuclear-weapons program. Since India will be able to use imported nuclear fuel to run its nuclear power plants, more of its scarce domestic supply will be at the disposal of its weapons programs. Despite this, the deal’s supporters/lobbyists contend that it represents a step forwards for non-proliferation because all civilian-nuclear supplies would be halted in the event of another nuclear-weapons test by India. This is far from clear, however. Many US lawmakers believe that US law would require a suspension of supplies, but Indian negotiators insist that they have not signed away their right to test nuclear weapons. An attempt by some US legislators to amend the deal to clarify this point unfortunately and mysteriously failed.
According to some American experts the best-case scenario as far as the US is concerned would have been for India to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Given that this is not a serious possibility, bringing India even partly within the non-proliferation framework may be a better outcome than the status quo. However, the potential costs are high. Although being a signatory to the NPT is no guarantee of non-proliferation, the deal sends a mixed message to potential proliferators (and defacto nuclear-armed countries like Israel, Pakistan and North Korea) by seeming to reward India’s 1974 nuclear misbehavior when it pilfered a Canadian supplied reactor.
Another argument in support of the Indo-U.S. ‘Nukes-for-mangoes’ deal is, that it is meant to be the centerpiece of a new strategic partnership between the US and India. Noting India’s uneasy relationship with a rising China, many US analysts see India as the geopolitical ‘swing state’ of Asia. The hope is that with the nuclear deal—which is likely to be closely followed by major Indian purchases of conventional weapons from US defence contractors—will seal closer relations between the United States and the world’s largest Cast-ridden demoNcracy - India.
A commentary in the Economist London, headlined, ‘A Legacy project – Mourning an (link) exemption that may defeat the rules,’hits the nail on the head when it said that, “FOR India’s embattled prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and America’s soon-to-depart president, George Bush, the waiver for India agreed on September 6th by the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) is meant to build a lasting legacy: their own. Critics fear its real testament will be lasting damage to the global nuclear non-proliferation regime. Hitherto NSG rules barred nuclear commerce with any country that had not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or had not put ALL its nuclear industry under safeguards operated by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear guardian. India, which rejects the NPT and has built and tested bombs, will do neither. Instead, in return for the NSG waiver it has merely promised to separate out some designated “civilian” nuclear reactors (the list has still to be formalized) for inspection. Some have opposed the deal outright, for undermining the NPT by giving nuclear India more rights than non-nuclear countries that have signed the treaty. Others, first America’s Congress and then a valiant rearguard of countries at the NSG, tried to attach damage-limiting conditions: that all nuclear trade with India should cease if it resumes nuclear testing; that nothing should be done to help India build up sufficient reactor-fuel stocks to ride out post-test sanctions; and that trade in especially sensitive skills and technologies for enriching uranium or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel to extract plutonium (both useful in weapons-making) be explicitly banned.”
The above mentioned Economist commentary went on to say that, “The NSG waiver fails on all counts. It says only that nuclear sales can be for civilian nuclear facilities under safeguards (none of India’s existing enrichment or reprocessing operations is on the civilian list), though skills are easily transferable. It refers to a statement by Mr. Manmohan Singh that India will keep to its “voluntary” test moratorium. But that assurance is political, not legal, since India refuses to sign the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty; a future government might equally voluntarily decide to test again. India also refuses to cap its production of weapons-usable uranium and plutonium, as America, Britain, France, Russia and China have done. A hard-fought agreement that the NSG operate unanimously has been overturned. Should India test again, India’s waiver will in effect let individual governments decide whether and how to curtail nuclear trade. That deal is done.”
Like the Economist every expert, and also every Sikh, recognizes that the U.S.-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal circumvents the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which came into force on March 05, 1970. In fact this U.S.-India deal encourages Nuclear proliferation and ridicules the 45-member (NSG) Nuclear Suppliers Group and its raison d`etre.
The three million strong Sikh diaspora (which includes half a million Sikh/Americans in the United States) hope the nukes just go away! The 3 million strong diaspora Sikhs fear for their 23 million Sikh compatriots captive in their homeland of Punjab, under Indian occupation, who are living dangerously and unhappily in their South Asian homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, which is sandwiched between two nuclear armed South Asian rivals, India & (link) Pakistan. As a result the Sikhs have been demanding, and will continue demanding and working, for a nuclear/missile free South Asia as it is a question of survival of the Sikh people, their civilization and their historic holy shrines located in both India and Pakistan.
The Sikhs want a South Asia free of missiles and Nuclear weapons and nuclear tests – they want peace in order to survive. That is why the Washington-based Khalistan Affairs Center made a heroic effort in November/ December last year to lobby against the U.S.-India ‘Nukes-for-Mangoes’ deal as the half million strong Sikh-American community senses grave dangers in the current situation, where India and Pakistan, have nuclear missiles pointed at each other with the Sikh Homeland of Punjab, Khalistan, (with its 23 million Sikhs and numerous holy shrines) sandwiched as it is, between the two.
