Indian leader comes out swinging on nuclear pact
Prime minister defends US plan
NEW DELHI -- With his trademark blue turban, Clark Kent glasses, and salt-and-pepper beard, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India still looks like the earnest, unassuming economist he has been for most of his adult life.
But last week, Indians caught a glimpse of a different man. Trying to salvage a landmark nuclear- cooperation deal between India and the United States, Singh came out swinging.
He said the deal was the right way forward. He waved aside objections from opponents on the left and the right like so much chaff. And, in a much-talked-about interview with the newsweekly India Today, he accused his political enemies of praying for his death.
"Talking tough," the magazine declared on its cover, below a photo of the 74-year-old Singh.
In part because of Singh's new assertiveness, his government is facing its most serious crisis since coming to power three years ago.
The leader of a group of communist parties has warned Singh of "serious consequences" if he pushes ahead with the nuclear agreement, which would allow the transfer of American nuclear technology to India in exchange for the opening up of Indian civilian reactors to international inspectors.
Critics say the accord would make New Delhi too cozy with Washington.
The pact does not require approval from India's Parliament. But if leftist lawmakers withdraw their support from Singh, they could force early elections. Virtually no one, politicians or voters, relishes the idea of elections ahead of their expected cycle in 2009.
As officials toil to reach a compromise, the communists have promised to keep the pressure on by mounting public protests against the accord.
Singh expressed hope the deal would sweep past its political troubles. "If winter is here, can spring be far behind?" he said, slightly misquoting poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.
A communist leader said the prime minister could be in for "a long nuclear winter."
For now, observers are scratching their heads over Singh's sudden burst of combativeness, wondering what inspired such a change in a self-effacing leader who has, up to now, been more apt to seek a quiet consensus.
"The tone of his remarks is very out of character with his public life since 1991," the year Singh rose to national prominence as finance minister, said Mahesh Rangarajan, a political analyst. "I can't think of another time when he was so outspoken on an issue."
Some speculate that Singh simply lost patience with opposition to the deal, which was first suggested by President Bush two years ago and has been the subject of headlines ever since.
Others see Singh's tough stance as a shrewdly calculated move, a deliberate gambit to make the left blink on an issue where public opinion appears to be in his favor.
"There is a sense in which the PM is playing a strong hand," analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta wrote in The Indian Express newspaper.
From the start of his tenure, Singh frequently has been dismissed as nothing more than a puppet of Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party and India's most powerful woman.
After the face-off between Singh and the left escalated last week, Gandhi cut short a trip to South Africa and rushed back to India, presumably to help craft a strategy to counter the stiff opposition to the nuclear deal.
Born under the British Indian Empire in what is now Pakistan, Singh is India's 14th prime minister since independence in 1947 and the first Sikh to hold the office.
He has never won a popular election. He is a member of Parliament's upper chamber because he was selected by the Legislature in the small northeastern state of Assam.
Gautam Ganguly, a local official who worked with Singh during the mid-1990s on implementing development plans in Guwahati, the capital of Assam, said he found the future prime minister to be "very humble, but at the same time non-compromising: no compromise on the quality of work, no compromise on any aspect."
But the stakes are higher with the nuclear accord. Singh's personal credibility, his government's viability, and New Delhi's improving relations with Washington are all, to some degree, on the line. 