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Agenda For A Post-Nuclear Vajpayee

Ending a recent column, I wrote, tongue-in-cheek: "I'll have more, in coming weeks, about denotified tribes. Unless there are more bombs." I learned quite soon that in matters nuclear, tongue-in-cheek is not the way to be. Sure enough, there were more bombs. This time, in Pakistan.

It was really the only thing that country could have done, wasn't it? If things had happened back to front, if it had been Pakistan that had gone nuclear on May 11, India would have been tripping over its big toes to set off its own bombs. As it happened, it was India that went first. So Pakistan had to follow.

And you have to wonder, as I tried to do in another recent column: when will either country find itself leaders of some stature, some courage, some vision? Leaders who will say: enough of the madness, enough of this futile, bizarre race, let's talk peace and prosperity for all our people.

Yes, how is it that through half a century, from among 1.2 billion people in our two countries, there has not been one leader like that? How is it that in another part of the world, just 40 million people -- 3% of India and Pakistan -- produce a man who has the courage to renounce the nuclear weapon path his country had trodden, the strength to set his once torn and bloody nation on its first tentative steps towards reconciliation and peace?

How did South Africa find itself one Nelson Mandela? What concerns me more, why can't we?

That is really an issue here. In May 1998, two of the world's poorest countries conducted nuclear explosions one after the other. In doing so, they ended up exactly where they had been before they lit the fuses -- at a standoff with each other. You can look at this fantastic and sorry spectacle in many ways. But consider this one: it speaks of a profound lack of leadership in both states.

Of course, you could say the same of most countries today. As the century winds down, the world is dotted with Yeltsins and Clintons, Chiracs and Mubaraks, Fujimoris and Habibies: men whose names our grandchildren will know, at best, as footnotes in history books. Not a Gandhi, an Ataturk, a Churchill, a Roosevelt among them. You leave out Mandela, you're left with a collection of world leaders that would struggle to reach mediocrity.

To that list, our corner of the world can add Vajpayee and Sharief, Advani and Gohar Ayub Khan, and down the line from there. Not a single statesman in the lot. Yes, you could say the same of much of the rest of the planet. But that still is no consolation.

Still, now that they have exploded their silly nuclear toys ("You did five? We did six, so we're ahead!" and "No, we are!"), finished with their grubby little games of manhood ("We now have a big bomb", and "We've proved we're not eunuchs"), maybe there's still an opportunity here. For what it's worth, here's a post-nuclear agenda I'd like to see pursued. It's aimed at Indian leaders, but it applies just as surely to our neighbours too.

The first task, given the climate we have landed ourselves in, is to build some trust again. This has at least two dimensions: internal and external. Within India, a firm message must go out from Vajpayee himself: no signing in blood, plans for Pokhran temples, celebrating the bombs, that kind of idiocy. What we have done is grave beyond anything we have known; in minutes, its consequences can turn us all into so many grains of sand in the most horrible way. As the mayor of Nagasaki, Iccho Itoh, said of the horrors of nuclear weapons in a recent interview: "From our experience, we have a very clear recognition that nuclear bombs and human beings cannot coexist."

Let us think about that and understand the implications fully. If we pretend we have won a cricket match, we only show how poorly we comprehend our own actions. That does nothing but make our neighbours uneasy, so that much more itchy-fingered themselves.

Outside India, we must announce to the world that now that the tests are over and done with, we are willing and in fact intent on talking peace with Pakistan. Real peace, with everything on the table, nothing off. Let's make it clear: we want to address our differences and we don't consider war an acceptable way to do that.

To show how serious we are, we will freeze defence spending where it is today: after all, if we are just as secure or insecure now as we were before the tests, as we were this time last year, we surely have no need to spend more money on defence than we did last year. (I realise the Budget has made this speculation redundant, but there's no harm in hoping for some post-budgetary sanity from Vajpayee and Yashwant Sinha). What's more, we will also commit to cutting the defence budget by 5% in each of the next five years. We expect Pakistan to do the same.

Second, let's demonstrate just how serious we are about our own people. The 5% we save on defence will go directly into funding primary education. Towards which, it would be thrilling to hear our PM say: we have already picked ten districts (some appropriate number) to make a start with. What would have been this year's routine defence spending increase is already being used in these ten districts -- to train teachers, budget attractive salaries, build schools, implement bureaucratic reforms to properly monitor teacher attendance and performance, with various other measures on these lines. We will pick ten such districts every year for these efforts. All in a massive, coordinated, nationwide push to educate every Indian. Again, we expect Pakistan to do the same.

Third, let's translate national security into ordinary terms we can all follow. Let's show that it has to mean the security every Indian feels every day of his life. If half the country lives in fear of hunger and disease; if countless millions live in fear of violence and injustice without hope of redress; if that is the situation for much of India with or without the bomb -- in that case, most Indian lives are plagued with insecurity, bomb or no bomb.

This item on the agenda will set out to change that. A good place to start is with long-pending, long-suggested police reforms. They will, among other things, free the police from interference by political fiddlers like Laloo, Thackeray and Jayalalitha. With the police allowed to function more effectively, more independently, they can assure us better justice than we are used to today. Will Vajpayee feed on the political momentum from his bombs to implement those reforms? There is much else he can do in this direction, but I'll settle for this much.

There's a danger in making agendas too long: a danger that in cogitating over all the tasks to be tackled, nothing will actually get done. So I won't give into the temptation to extend this one. Three post-nuclear tasks, Mr Vajpayee, that's all. One, rebuild trust and work for peace. Two, make a tangible start on the education we promised our people half a century ago. Three, put police reforms in place.

The easy job is mine: dreaming up agendas like these, even reiterating ideas and issues I have written about before. For my minimal pains, I will be rewarded with a cheque and possibly a few emailed responses. The Prime Minister has the far tougher task: turning agendas into action. But he also has the far greater potential reward: the chance to build one-sixth of mankind into a strong, confident nation, at peace with its neighbours and a force for justice inside and outside India.

A B Vajpayee could grab that chance, show us that he is a statesman among mere politicians.

Of course, he could also choose to sit tight on his nuclear bombs, laughing quietly at how easily he managed to pull a pile of nuclear wool over our eyes. Tongue-in-cheek, you might say.

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