New Delhi Times

It always surprises me how much fuss is made about these agreements that India signs with US and other countries. The recent nuclear deal is a good example. One thing that we got to remember is that a deal or agreement between two nations is only a piece of paper and that’s it.

If US was to break the agreement, you can’t really put their president in jail for that. Likewise, if India was to tomorrow violate some clause of the nuclear deal, what is going to happen? Say, we conducted nuclear tests. Would the deal be off? Would US stop supplying the know how to us? Perhaps but maybe not. That would depend on the position, power and weight that India holds at that point of time. If we are a strong nation with a strong economy which has impact on the US interests, or if the world political situation requires US to align interests with us (maybe to counter China or contain Pakistan), US will be happy to overlook some “minor” infringements of the deal. Another way to look at it is that if we weren’t important to US interests in the future, they will anyway try and force us to curb nuclear tests AND stop us from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel (which the current agreement allows) AND impose a sanction or two for good measure. India never signed the NPT and on top of that publicly conducted nuclear tests few years back. But we came out alright at the end of it.

So maybe we should just stop crying ourselves hoarse on how we have sold off the national interests to US (unless you are a politician in which case you should, by all means, gain maximum mileage out of this juicy opportunity to oppose the government policy). World politics is like a capitalistic economy. Market forces and not signed agreements decide the future course of nations. So let me finish off by quoting a famous sher

Khud hi ko kar buland itna ki har taqdeer se pehle

Khuda bande se khud poche bata teri raza kya he