ANALYSIS: Nuclear deal brings out best and worst of Indian democracy

By Sunrita Sen Jul 20, 2008, 13:10 GMT

New Delhi - A controversial civilian nuclear deal with the United States has brought out the best - and the worst - of Indian democracy.

India's United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is set to face a trust vote in parliament on Tuesday over the deal which would end India's nuclear isolation in return for opening its civilian reactors to international inspection.

Singh claims the deal is essential to power energy-hungry India's economic growth. The government's left allies, which withdrew support on July 9, say it would harm India's strategic interests.

India's parliamentary democratic system does not require a government to have its foreign policy decisions endorsed by parliament.

But a minority government like that of Singh finds that it may end up getting voted out of power for moving ahead with a deal that does not satisfy a majority of lawmakers.

Once the left parties' 59 lawmakers withdrew support to a government it backed for four years, Singh had little option but to seek a trust vote.

Indian democracy at its best, where governments cannot take unilateral decisions without the endorsement of parliament no matter what the rules are.

But the past week has also brought to the fore the darker side of democracy in India. As political parties tot up lawmakers, rumours of poaching and accusations of bribes and deals hog the daily headlines.

A divided electorate in a multi-party democracy has been voting in fractured parliaments in India since the early 1990s, with no single party securing a majority.

After each election, leading parties try to cobble together coalitions in order to get the magic number of 272 - a simple majority in a 545-member Lok Sabha, or lower house of parliament.

As a consequence, regional players and smaller groups often become kingmakers. Now that the left has withdrawn its support, Singh is hoping to retain power with the help of the Samajwadi Party, a regional player from populous Uttar Pradesh state, with 39 lawmakers.

Parliament is scheduled to meet for a special session on Monday to initiate a debate on the trust motion. The vote on the motion is set for Tuesday evening. Leading politicians for and against the government admit in private that the count is too close for comfort.

The two main parties in the present Lok Sabha, the Congress Party and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have 153 and 130 lawmakers, respectively. All others have less than 60 and at least 20 parties have only one to four lawmakers each.

It is these lawmakers who hold the key to whether the Singh government will survive and with it the India-US nuclear deal.

By the latest count, the UPA seems to have the assured vote of about 265 lawmakers, while those opposing it number 266 - give or take a crucial few votes.

Strange things happen in Indian politics. On Sunday, two days after the airport in Uttar Pradesh capital Lucknow was named after late Charan Singh, a former prime minister, his son Ajit Singh said the three lawmakers with his Rashtriya Lok Dal would vote against the government.

A rebel lawmaker from Singh's Congress Party claimed on Saturday that he had been offered an unbelievable one billion rupees (23 million dollars) to vote for the UPA or to abstain.

A senior left leader alleged opposition lawmakers were being offered 250 million rupees by the ruling coalition. The Samajwadi Party said its lawmakers were being bribed with 300 million rupees to vote against the UPA.

It' not just money. Lawmakers from the smaller parties and independents are being wooed with promises of ministerial berths if the government survives, electoral tickets for key constituencies - if it does not.

At another level, parties opposed to the Congress Party and BJP announced on Saturday that Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Mayawati (Eds: one name only) could be a prospective prime ministerial candidate in case they can cobble together a coalition to replace the UPA.

Mayawati, a leader of the lower caste Dalit community, is chief minister of Uttar Pradesh.

If the UPA emerges victorious it would be somewhat tarnished by this latest episode in Indian politics. But so would the left parties, whose opposition to the deal has placed it on the same platform as the Hindu right-wing BJP, once its sworn enemy, and Mayawati with her caste-based politics.

But for now, India's wheeling, dealing politicians are focusing on that magic number of 272. They cannot help but remember that BJP prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's government of 13 months was defeated in a trust motion in 1999 by a single vote.