Are the concerns expressed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's supporters justified when they argue that the PM loses his credibility if the deal is dumped?
Not only the PM, but India as a country will lose its international credibility.
How do you rate the Congress party's handling of this issue? Has the Congress played its cards well?
No. The Congress has done a lousy job in handling the deal.
How do you look at Communist Party of India-Marxist General Secretary Prakash Karat's moves and counter-moves vis-a-vis the nuclear deal in the past three years?
In my view, Karat's aim was all along to allow the Congress to go deep into the deal, stake its reputation and then humiliate it. So far, he has moved according to his plan. His objective was to humiliate the prime minister and the Congress so that its allies lose confidence.
He presumably expects that the Third Front parties would gain at the expense of the Congress and there can be a Third front government which the Left can dominate. It may not happen in the next election but in the one after it. Communists all over the world have targeted Social Democrats as their primary adversaries.
Don't you think allowing the government to go to the IAEA was a fatal error on the part of the Left leadership?
For reasons I have given, allowing the government to go this far was a carefully thought out scheme.
People fail to understand why the Left is raising objections now when the IAEA draft is ready. Shouldn't the Left have opposed the deal in 2005 itself? On the one hand, it allowed the government to approach the IAEA, while on the other, it now opposes the nuclear safeguards agreement. Where is the consistency here?
My answers above cover this point.
Image: US President George W Bush with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee in the White House, March 24. Photograph: Eric Draper/The White House via Getty Images
Also read: The people who swung the N-deal
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