India has got the best nuclear deal possible with the US. The India- US 123 Agreement's text, which Iwas made public few days before takes care of the promises made to Parliament by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. India's biggest concern that under no circumstances should the country's nuclear programme get adversely affected has been given due respect. The agreement is silent on what course the US will take if India is forced to go in for a fresh nuclear test. But the US Atomic Energy Act, 1954, is there for Washington to deal with such an eventuality. The US will invoke the Act, abrogate the deal and exercise its right to ask for the withdrawal of the nuclear fuel and technology supplied to India. But nothing will happen abruptly. India is unlikely to be a loser as the US may also take a positive view of such a development.

From any angle we look at the deal, the gains for India are tremendous. An editorial column in The Tribune [July 30, 2007] would describe the benefits – “There will be an end to the nuclear denial regime that came into effect with India's first nuclear tests in 1974. The nuclear apartheid practised against India prevented the expansion of the country's nuclear energy sector to meet the fast growing power requirement… India is expected to invest around $150 billion to boost its civil nuclear power programme with the help of the US companies engaged in this area… But the UK, France, Russia, Australia and some other
members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), too, are waiting for the day when there will be no curbs on nuclear trade with India.”

The deal is the greatest post- Independence achievement of India in the field of foreign relations and the biggest feather in the cap of the Congress government. Yet in the sordid world of Indian politics this does not mean that it will not be viciously attacked, misrepresented and attempted to be scuttled. The dirty campaign is already on.

“Our energy requirements and deficits have steadily grown and we have faced the prospect of industrial stagnation and periods of darkness in our urban homes and offices. Thanks to Shri. Manmohan Singh and his deft handling of the US government that the latter not only agreed to condone our 1998 impudence, but to do something significantly more. The Americans would actively help us to shop for and purchase nuclear fuel from the Suppliers Group without being obliged to sign the Non- Proliferation Treaty,'' writes Ram Jethmalani, in Deccan Chronicle [Aug 15, 2007].

The Telegraph [August 20, 1997], in an editorial, claimed, “India's entire nuclear power programme deserves evisceration because it costs the earth but provides not even a dream. Accounting for subsidies land cost financing and other costs India's reactors take far more out of the economy than they put in. Our nuclear plants provide less than two per cent of the annual electricity supply.” The paper concluded that atomic energy has proved to be an expensive and potentially dangerous illusion. During the squeeze a friendly Soviet Union was providing us some heavy water but clandestinely and in quantities of less than 1,000 kilograms at a time.