The India-U.S. civil nuclear agreement — described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as his best moment on the job — was dismissed on Saturday by the Left parties as a “dud deal” which had not yielded anything in the five years since.
Asked about his best moment as Prime Minister at his press conference on Friday, Dr. Singh had said: “Certainly, the best moment for me was when we were able to strike a nuclear deal with the United States to end the nuclear apartheid, which sought to stifle the processes of social and economic change, and technical progress of our country in many ways.”
Communist Party of India (Marxist) general secretary Prakash Karat said: “There is really nothing to say. It’s a dud deal for which we had to concede much more. What was projected as a big thing has given us nothing. We expected too much and willy-nilly became a junior partner of the U.S. in international affairs.”
CPI(M) Polit Bureau member Sitaram Yechury told PTI that Dr. Singh’s “best moment” was probably the “worst” for the country. “Not a single unit of nuclear power has been added as yet. But as a result of it, India’s foreign policy has been dovetailed to [that of] the U.S. The victims of this dovetailing has been the India-Iran gas pipeline, deterioration in [India’s] relations with other developing countries in agriculture and climate change, as these countries feel their interests have been compromised with India becoming a subordinate ally of the U.S.”
The former CPI general secretary, A.B. Bardhan, said the most controversial deal led to the Left parties withdrawing outside support to the United Progressive Alliance in 2008.
