Adding to the nuisance, article from ET- the print title is more exciting- A DEAL BETWEEN BAZAAR AND THE NATION. For last few days, I was searching for soemthing like this. Also do read todays ET third editorial.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Guest_Writer/What_controls_the_Indo-US_nuclear_deal/articleshow/msid-3234057,curpg-2.cms *What controls the Indo-US nuclear deal?* * * *The politics of the nuclear deal in India was turning horribly repetitive. At one end, we had our Prime Minister, almost echolalic in his protestations, and at the other the Left immaculately ideological in a throw back role to the sixties. In between were a cast of characters from Mayawati and Chandrababu Naidu to Sonia Gandhi and chorus of defence experts that could easily lay claims to a place in a Russian novel. The repetitiveness moved to redundancy as the play moved from the comic to the insufferable, when a sudden gestalt switch brought about a transformation. **The ideological machismo of a Prakash Karat suddenly wilted losing out to the wheeler-dealing of an Amar Singh. An old set of cliches led to new ones, both hiding a deep change in the political drama. How is one to read it? One of the great things about Indian democracy is its combination of predictability and surprise. In its working, it is a bit like its wiser cousin the Bollywood of the last three decades. In an ordinary sense, it operates on stereotypes of corruption, banality and cynicism**. The ordinary citizen almost despairs whether this system will ever change. He also realises that it is both open and venal, which in democratic<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Guest_Writer/What_controls_the_Indo-US_nuclear_deal/articleshow/3234057.cms>terms may be more creative than a world that is aristocratic and closed. **Such a politics begins with the simple assumption that there are no permanent enemies, just permanent interests. However, it goes beyond this Machiavellian premise to realise the difference between an adversary and an enemy. In politics, as political scientist Chantal Mouffe said, the man you battle with is not an enemy, someone you have to defeat, eliminate or** exterminate. He is an adversary**. ( I read it closely- DP) **Adversorial politics is more playful, more unpredictable. It is competitive but allows for negotiation, but it has the negotiability of the bazaar and not the market. It is not impersonal, it is based on old memories, it prefers the logic of coalitions, a win-win situation rather than a zero-sum game. ** It seeks system stability rather than regime crisis. Politics is based on continuous re-readings of the situation where text, pretext and context are convertible. For instance, you cannot quite figure out whether the nuclear deal will go through to solve a political issue in UP or vice versa. **The parties bring in our former President Kalam as a quotable quote and keep him out of the rest of the political text. Kalam's words, 'Nuclear deal is in national interest', is to read as a signal for action. If our ex-president as patriot and scientist has spoken, can SP be far behind? Nationalism, always a potent mix, triumphs and trumps CPI(M) politics. The Left is back to being a duo of regional parties. The pack is expertly shuffled. Whoever thought of the Kalam strategy is a master player of the political game. They have in one gestalt move changed the game of politics. Politicians<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Guest_Writer/What_controls_the_Indo-US_nuclear_deal/articleshow/3234057.cms>like Karat, Raja, Bardhan look like verbose villains who have overstayed their time on stage with parts that were overwritten. One realises the game is cynical, pragmatic and it is precisely interests that permit stability. * * * *Values, exaggerated to the extreme as ideology, may destabilise politics. In fact, the politics of non-negotiability is seen as anti-political. It is not that values are not important. It is just that they have to be articulated in the right way, at the right moment. They must not sound intractable or fundamentalist. It is not that people do not know the difference between good and bad, only they feel the necessity for their coexistence. It is a covert plea for the existence of multiple frames and viewpoints. One can personally grade or prioritise them but one has to allow for some notion of plurality. The politics of untouchability of groups or functions cannot threaten system stability. Electoral politics, in that sense, operates between the homeliness of the bazaar and the nation as home. **One immediately asks two questions. What does this mean for the liberal market imagination? Secondly, what does it hold for the future of values? It is not an open domain where everything is for sale. It is a grid, a gradient where negotiation is possible, where the same good is valued differently, where personal benefits derive from public goods, but no one denies the necessity of the public good. It is here that values come in because even interests and deals need a framework of value, a sense of the bigger community. A nuclear deal is not passed as a nuclear deal. That would be too profane. A nuclear deal is an affirmation of national interests, of science<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Guest_Writer/What_controls_the_Indo-US_nuclear_deal/articleshow/msid-3234057,curpg-2.cms>, of our dignity as a nation. Kalam affirms it as myth and Mulayam carries it out as ritual, as a part of the processes of politics. A few good clichés from Amar Singh also help create the sense of values and community. It might be a horse-trade but you express it in terms of species<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Guest_Writer/What_controls_the_Indo-US_nuclear_deal/articleshow/msid-3234057,curpg-2.cms>value. **There is a bit of hypocrisy here but it is a hypocrisy which appeals to stability, which claims a loyalty if not an adherence to values. Of course, there is no debate about the essential qualities of nuclear energy<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Guest_Writer/What_controls_the_Indo-US_nuclear_deal/articleshow/msid-3234057,curpg-2.cms>. Sixty years of debates on history of the peace movements, the memoirs of the Pugwash moment, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists could be non-existent. Our politics is not contending that what it is good for GM, is good for the country, only that if the nuclear deal is good for the country, it may be good for the party. It is a lowest common denominator politics but within the democratic<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Guest_Writer/What_controls_the_Indo-US_nuclear_deal/articleshow/msid-3234057,curpg-2.cms>framework. The fission and fusion of Indian politics control the nuclear deal and men like Amar Singh act as fast breeder reactors. Some deeply Chanakya-like-brain must have planned this little possibility in the blackhole of politics that the Left had created for Manmohan Singh. The new events provide a sense of relief, a breather. ** There is a second slippage of science that few have noticed. We have debated whether the nuclear deal is good for Indian state as a legal contract or a political deal. But few ask whether nuclear energy<http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Guest_Writer/What_controls_the_Indo-US_nuclear_deal/articleshow/msid-3234057,curpg-2.cms>is good for India as a society. The sadness lies there. Meanwhile, Indian politics will muddle its democratic way through lesser questions. Such is the way of our democracy, stumbling between mediocrity and searching for the ** greatest good of the greatest number. **Politics provides value for money and values for sale but fortunately within the electoral democratic framework.* * * --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
