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 the parliament is divided between two blocs, the soft right Congress 
 and its allies (217 seats) and the hard right BJP and its allies (185 
 seats). Regional parties that do not line up with these three major 
 blocs hold the remaining 78 seats (among them, the largest is a party 
 close to the Left, the Samajwadi or Socialist Party, with 36 seats; 
 although it has long since jettisoned its socialism for a corrupt 
 populism). The elite and middle class are split between the hard and 
 soft right on such issues as their attitude toward what in India is 
 called communalism (fundamentalism: the ideology of Hindutva). On 
 issues of social and economic welfare, the two blocs are virtually 
 indistinguishable, except that the Congress has within it an old 
 Gandhian section that is yet to be extinguished and that enabled the 
 otherwise party of free markets to be held to a Common Minimum Program 
 with the Left on issues such as agrarian policy, this so that the Left 
 would support the Congress government from the outside. The Left, 
 therefore, was the only brake against the enthusiasm of the elite and 
 middle class, both of whom wanted to drown themselves in Bush's spittle. 
  
 Dollars from Rupees. 
  
 In the early 1990s, the U. S. administration read the shift in India 
 quite correctly. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen observed the 
 middle-class of 60 million, the size of France, and salivated. For 
 Bentsen, and for the Clinton administration, the existence of this 
 class and its hitherto suffocated desires meant that there existed a 
 market to help contain the crisis of over-accumulation to which 
 "globalization" was to be the answer. A decline in the annual rate of 
 growth of the global Gross Domestic Product from the 1960s (5.4%) to 
 the 1980s (3%) offered evidence of the crisis, but nothing was as stark 
 as the falling profit rate of the 500 U. S. transnational corporations 
 (4.7% in the late 1950s to -5.3% in the 1980s). Walden Bello recites 
 these figures and concludes, "Oversupply of commodities and inadequate 
 demand are the principle corporate anomalies inhibiting performance in 
 the global economy." 
  
 Bentsen's comments had a concrete purpose: the US administration hoped, 
 in essence, that India's middle-class might absorb this oversupply. The 
 Indian government began a long process to dismantle various kinds of 
 social protections for both the national economy and for the 
 dispossessed and exploited classes. This process did not come easily, 
 since the newly confident dominant classes had yet to settle accounts 
 with powerful institutions of the working class and peasantry (trade 
 unions, political parties, socio-political organizations, peasant 
 groups, and on). Nevertheless, by 1994, large sections of industrial 
 production, the extraction sector, utilities, transportation, 
 telecommunications and finance found themselves prey to private 
 investors. 
  
 In Washington, DC, the US-India Business Council (USIBC) emerged from 
 hibernation (it was formed in 1975) in the 1990s to lobby for US 
 business interests in India. The USIBC is housed, conveniently, in the 
 US Chamber of Commerce in Washington, from where it pushes against the 
 walls erected in India to protect the national economy from those who 
 want to make dollars out of rupees. For the nuclear deal, the USIBC and 
 the US Chamber of Commerce's Coalition for Partnership with India drew 
 upon the lobbying expertise of Patton Boggs and Stonebridge 
 International. They had a vested interest in the deal, because it would 
 have allowed U.S. firms to gain contracts in the Indian nuclear sector. 
 In March 2007, the USIBC hosted a 230-member business delegation to 
 India, the Commercial Nuclear Executive Mission. Tim Richards of 
 General Electric (GE) gingerly said of the trip, "We know India's need 
 for nuclear power" (there is, in fact, no such need; nuclear power 
 would only cover a maximum of seven percent of India's energy needs). 
 Ron Somers, president of USIBC, said of the purported $60 billion 
 boondoggle that would have come as a result of the deal, "The bounty is 
 enormous." 
  
 As the deal fizzled out, the nuclear moneymen grieved. Russia and 
 France had also already lined up to supply India, and both had begun to 
 lobby the Nuclear Suppliers Group to give the deal a free pass. A few 
 days after Singh told Bush their deal was in cold storage, seventy 
 French delegates from twenty-nine nuclear firms met with three hundred 
 Indian delegates in Mumbai for a discussion on a potential France-India 
 nuclear deal. French Ambassador to India Jerome Bonnafont eagerly 
 anticipated the restarting of nuclear cooperation between the two 
 states, which would provide substantial contracts for the French 
 nuclear industry. They want to make Francs out of Rupees. 
  
 Chicken-Head. 
  
 India's ambassador to Washington, Ronen Sen, fretted about the US-India 
 deal's failure. The Bush team has approved the deal, and so has the 
 Indian cabinet, he carped (he seems to have forgotten his elementary 
 civics: it is parliament that has authority over such deals, not the 
 cabinet  a distinction that does not operate so effectively in the US, 
 for all its constitutional checks and balances). "So why do you have 
 all this running around like headless chickens, looking for a comment 
 here or a comment there, and these little storms in a tea-cup." The 
 parliament has now demanded that Mr. Sen be recalled to India and face 
 questions for his disrespect to the elected officials who opposed the 
 deal. 
  
 On the same flight as him will be a delegation from the USINPAC, the 
 face of the new "Indian Lobby" in Washington, who is eager to take 
 lessons from and mimic the Israel Lobby. Robinder Sachdev, who founded 
 the group, told the Press Trust of India, that the emerging opposition 
 to the deal within the US Congress startles him. "It is like being 
 penny wise and pound foolish," he said. "The US industry will benefit 
 from the nuclear deal." This is an honesty descried by his friends in 
 the nuclear commerce world. As GE India's chief executive officer T.P. 
 Chopra told a Wharton periodical, "The last thing we want is to give 
 ammunition to the Left-wing parties. They would love to project the 
 U.S. as greedy capitalists selling the country for a few dollars more. 
 Business will keep silent until it's signed, sealed and delivered." 
  
 In Mumbai, as the French-Indian delegations met, the Communists held a 
 public rally where they condemned all talk of a nuclear deal. In terms 
 of the US-India deal specifically, Karat of the CPI(M) said, "it is 
 part of the strategic and military relations that the US wants to have 
 with India." It would never be allowed. In Delhi, meanwhile, Prime 
 Minister Singh said, "I have not given up hope yet." Hope is all that 
 remains for the convenience seeking bourgeoisie: the spectacle of 
 advanced capitalism beckons, even if the price is to be paid by the 
 millions of people who suffer the trials of Z59.5. 
  
 [Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian 
 History and Director of International Studies at Trinity College, 
 Hartford, CT His new book is "The Darker Nations: A People's History of 
 the Third World," New York: The New Press, 2007. He can be reached at: 
 vijay.prashad@trincoll.edu ] 
  
  
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