Some Say India Deal Ignores Another Energy Need: Food

A nuclear cooperation deal reached last week between the U.S. and India has added fuel to the debate over whether the South Asian nation can afford a multibillion-dollar push to become a regional military power.

As President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shook hands on the landmark pact Thursday, the World Bank released a study showing that almost 40% of the world’s malnourished children live in India.

Bush administration officials say the nuclear accord, which must be approved by Congress, is partly aimed at strengthening India so it can serve as a counterbalance to neighboring China. However, development experts here said the strategy ignores the plight of several hundred million Indians mired in poverty.

“I think the Western world, and perhaps more so the United States of America, has a feeling that India is a highly developed country,” said Babu Mathew, India director of the development agency ActionAid. “So they are reluctant to face the reality of the other side of India, which is millions of people living in poverty.”

An estimated 300 million of India’s 1.1 billion people live below the official poverty line of less than $1 a day. The number of poor is actually much higher because the government underestimates the daily minimum of calories each Indian needs when measuring poverty, Mathew and other experts say.

Although the right to adequate nutrition is enshrined in the Indian Constitution, more than 38% of the nation’s children are undernourished, compared with 26% in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Bank study found.

Singh’s government raised defense spending 7% in its budget announced last week, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which leads a left-wing alliance that keeps the coalition government in power, said the budget didn’t provide enough for agriculture, health, education and job creation.

The budget “has failed to address many of the vital problems of the common people, particularly the peasantry and the unemployed,” the party said in a statement.

Bush said U.S. aid to India’s civilian nuclear program would strengthen the country’s economy by helping it meet rapidly growing demand for electricity. India gets 56% of its electricity from coal-fired plants and just 3% from nuclear reactors. A quarter of its power supply comes from hydroelectric dams.

Just over half of Indian homes are connected to the power grid. Many suffer frequent blackouts because India doesn’t generate enough electricity to meet demand. The power shortage slows industries and businesses, sapping economic growth.

But Mathew argued that more nuclear power plants wouldn’t meet the needs of the poor.

“People who don’t have land, people who don’t have employment, people who don’t have housing can hardly use electricity,” he said. “The ‘trickle-down’ model of development has been prescribed for India for 50 years, and 50% of India’s population has not received the benefits of it.”

Under Thursday’s deal, India agreed to allow United Nations inspectors to monitor 14 of 22 nuclear reactors it will have built by 2014. The other eight will be closed military facilities, free to produce weapons-grade material to expand India’s nuclear arsenal even though the nation refuses to sign the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

The U.S. tentatively promised to sell advanced civilian nuclear technology and nuclear fuel to India. Analysts say the U.S. sales could help India increase its weapons production by freeing up domestic uranium sources.

But nuclear power is unlikely to make much difference to India’s needs, said Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a professor of international studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

“Even our nuclear scientists are saying that in 20 years, perhaps nuclear energy could meet 5% of India’s energy needs,” he said.

Last year, Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam called on Parliament to boost the share of India’s power produced from renewable energy sources, such as the sun, wind, oceans and biogas, from the current 5% to at least 20%.

Kalam, an aeronautical engineer who played a leading role in India’s missile and nuclear weapons programs, also argued that India should develop thorium-based reactors because the country has an abundant source of the raw material.

But building nuclear plants and disposing of their waste is expensive, “so this idea that it’s a cheap fuel, or a clean fuel after [accidents at] Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, are highly questionable assumptions,” Chenoy said.

India’s government would do more for the economy by doubling education spending from the current 3% of gross domestic product, Mathew said. India’s healthcare system needs even more help because it receives less than 1% of GDP, he added.

India surpassed China to become the biggest buyer on the world arms market in 2004, when it agreed to buy $5.7 billion in weaponry, according to a U.S. congressional study. China’s arms contracts totaled $2.9 billion that year.

India’s arms contracts that year included a $1.4-billion deal for a used Russian aircraft carrier and a lease on two Russian nuclear-powered submarines, acquisitions seen as a move toward countering China’s growing naval strength.

India is also shopping for 126 fighter jets. After reaching the nuclear deal, the U.S. announced it was willing to sell New Delhi advanced F-16s and F-18s worth up to $6.9 billion.

The countries insist their new partnership will not spark a regional arms race.

“We have no territorial ambition and will not join any arms race, but will procure arms as per requirements for defense preparedness,” Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee said Saturday.

That is a common “argument for legitimizing military expenditures in a poor country where thousands of farmers are committing suicide because of debt,” Chenoy said.