October 5,1998
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Move, Uncle Sam Vajpayee's offer to sign CTBT is contingent on America being equally concillatory
This is where the talks between Jaswant Singh and Strobe Talbott come in. Obviously, Vajpayee expects his conciliatory step to be reciprocated. Essentially, Uncle Sam has to willy nilly recognise India as a nuclear power and accept a certain weaponisation on the principle of minimum deterrence. After all, if Chinese and Pakistani missiles point to Indian cities and if Central Asia is a potential nursery for nuclear terrorism, India has a right to self-defence. This is the key issue; economic sanctions are just a sideshow. There is reason to believe the Americans too are agreeable to a halfway house. The recent report of the Brookings Institution-Council for Foreign Relations task force urging a realistic recognition of South Asia's nuclear concerns is noteworthy. Should it find reflection in Talbott's next round of talks with Singh, the Indo-US thaw would well and truly have begun. Rana's Exit Policy
It is easy to see this as a battle between avaricious cricketers and indigent others. That would be both simplistic and unfair. Nobody can grudge cricketers the money they make, especially since they have turned a gentle pastime into a mammoth commercial enterprise. Even so, India has a duty towards people like Rana who spend more time looking for ideal practice facilities than actually honing their skills. In the old days, business houses and public-sector companies ran a disguised patronage network in the form of employment. In times of recession, as Rana has discovered, even corporate sponsors shy away. It is incumbent upon the Government to act. True, it can't subsidise just about everyone. Yet, athletes of world-class standard should become wards of the state. Perhaps a graded system with higher funding for better performers could be evolved. Perhaps Rana could still be kept from the emigration counter. |
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About the only complaint that can be made against Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee's offer to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) is that it could have
come earlier. Vajpayee's speech at the United Nations had two aims. First, it sought to
reassure the world that despite Pokhran II it was not India's intention to engage in a
frenzied arms race, that India was keen to adhere to the rules of the game -- however
unequal they may be. At a second level, Vajpayee's statement was only a gambit in the
complex diplomatic negotiations between Delhi and Washington dc. Signing CTBT will do
India no harm. The Government has already declared a moratorium on further nuclear tests.
India is also one of the few countries which can carry out the sub-critical tests which
CTBT permits. As such, India is already a de facto CTBT member. To suggest, therefore,
that it should only sign CTBT as part of a global nuclear disarmament agreement is to
relapse into a doctrinaire world view, worthy only of the Cold War. The point is not
whether India should accede to CTBT but the price at which it should do so. 
When he won two gold medals in the shooting events of the Commonwealth Games
at Kuala Lumpur, Jaspal Rana provided ample evidence of his sense of timing. It was
equally apparent when Rana used the resultant media attention to articulate his financial
worries and the fact that he was toying with the idea of migrating to Australia. In most
countries there would have been an uproar. In India, where the shrug of the shoulders is
virtually an art form, nobody bothered. That an athlete at the prime of his career, a
potential Olympic winner is frustrated enough to think of changing his passport should
leave every Indian cringing. In a wicked irony, just after Rana made his anguish known the
Board of Control for Cricket in India announced it was paying the cricketers who went to
the games Rs 1 lakh each, Rs 1 lakh for being thrashed out of contention. In India, the
caste system doesn't go away; it merely reinvents itself. 
