The Lofty Lantern

Just weeks after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government won a slim but substantial victory on a trust vote in the Indian Parliament, the ruling Congress Party’s coalition is in a strong position between an opposition split into a conservative bloc led by the BJP Party, and a left Third Front consisting of the Communist Parties and the BSP.

As the trust vote showed, there is currently a bare majority of votes in the Lok Sabha in neither of those two coalitions. The question for the Congress Party and its latest, strongest ally, the Samajwadi Party, is can that coalition hold and succeed in the upcoming elections.

Electorally, the crucial region is Uttar Pradesh, by far the largest state in India, which elects 80 of the 545 members of the Indian Parliament. Currently, the Samajwadi Party has 33 of those votes, the most of any party in the region. Though the Congress Party has only 9 seats in the state, two of them are held by party leader Sonia Gandhi (wife, daughter-in-law and granddaughter-in-law of former Prime Minister) and her son, Rahul Gandhi, both national figures to whom popularity in the largest state in the country matter. Indian Parliamentary elections are decided district by district, giving incentives to coalitions to determine ahead of time which party will contest which seat, so as to not split the vote. The negotiations on how to divide Uttar Pradesh are delicate. Congress has made noises about hoping to have its party’s candidate be on the ballot in 40 of the 80 votes,  but it is highly unlikely that the Samajwadi Party will accept that arrangement.

Technically, the Samajwadi Party is still keeping some distance from Congress’ coalition, hoping that it can now gain crucial concessions before it officially joins. Its first concern is that Congress’ emphasis on economic reform will keep it from backing politically popular concessions to the many farmers who are now navigating unusually difficult financial straits. The SP’s position is strong, and Congress will probably be forced to acquiesce in some form, to keep this new coalition alive.

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A feasibility study looking into the potential for a cluster of pipelines bringing oil, natural gas and other resources from Turkey to Israel, and possibly India, will take ten months.The pipelines would begin to be constructed sometime in 2009, and is expected to cost nearly 8 billion dollars. The Turks and Israelis are hoping that the French-led Union for the Mediterranean might help fund the project.

The proposed pipeline would allow the oil that normally takes more than a month to go from Russia to India, to arrive in only 19 days. It is expected to transport up to 40 million tonnes of oil, or more than 270 million barrels, annually. In 2007, Israel consumed oil at the rate of 80 million barrels annually, the vast majority of which came from Russia. The rest of the oil is expected to be exported to India and possibly East Asia.

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A series of countries, including Turkey, Israel and India are discussing a new pipeline that could play a decisive role in the energy politics of the region. The proposed “Medstream” project would be a cluster of five pipelines transmitting oil, natural gas, water, fiberoptics, and electricity. The oil and natural gas would probably come from Azerbejan and Russia and arrive first in Samsun, Turkey, a port on the country’s Black Sea coast. From there, it would go to Ceyhan, a city near Turkey’s Mediterannean coast. It would then travel through an undersea pipeline to Ashkelon, a city in Israel, and then go over land to Eilat, an Israeli city on the Gulf of Aqaba, which feeds into the Red Sea. From there, it could go to India.

Israel is interested in this project as a secure route for it to recieve energy. India finds it an appealing method to recieve large quantities of oil and natural gas through a route that would avoid both the crowded and potentially dangerous Suez Canal and the Straits of Hormuz. Eventually, the Medstream project could also send oil and natural gas to countries throughout Asia.

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After the Indian parliament confirmed its trust in Manmohan Singh’s government and by extension the 123 Nuclear Agreement with the United States, the opposition is realigning. The two national political parties in India are the center-left Congress Party and the conservative BJP. In the most recent battle, the BJP added the Communists as allies forming a right-left coalition that proved insufficient to defeat the Congress Party’s coalition.

Those strange bedfellows didn’t remain so for long. Now the opposition to the Congress Party is splitting into a conservative wing and into a Third Front, consisting of the Communist parties and the independent leftist BSP, led by Mayawati. This Third Front is relying on the fact that roughly half of India’s voters support neither nominally national party, but rather one of the many regional parties.

Meanwhile, the BJP is trying to move into some of the space left open by the Congress Party. To gain the support of the Samajwadi Party, Congress was forced to retract its support to a bill guaranteeing one third of all political seats to women. Now, the BJP is backing it. The BJP now needs to rebuild its support, considering it just ejected 8 of its 130 members of the Lok Sabha for either voting against it in the trust vote, or abstaining.

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The Indian government won their vote confirming trust in their leadership by a slim 275-256 margin, practically guaranteeing that the 123 Nuclear Agreement between the US and India will pass, probably by a larger margin.

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As his side appears to be nearing victory, this must be the icing on Samajwadi Party’s General Secretary Amar Singh’s day.

Interestingly, the two members of the Congress Party to abandon it - Kuldeep Bishnoi and Dr. Arvind Kumar Sharma - are both from Haryana. Of the 10 members of parliament from that state, 9 of them are members of Congress while the 10th is of the conservative BJP Party. The other 7 Congressmen are expected to vote with their party.

There are reports that as few as 33 of the Samajwadi Party’s members of parliament will back the government, 2 less than was previously reported. If those two parliamentarians back the opposition, then the government’s lead would shrink to 3

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Vanlalzawma, the only MP for the Mizo National Front (MNF), who was expected to vote for the opposition against the government, announced he would abstain, bringing the magic number required to get a majority down to 271. (There are 542 voting members in the Lok Sabha but two - Vanlalzawma and Banerjee of the All India Trinamool Congress - are abstaining. In the case of a tie, the Speaker would cast the decisive vote). The government now has a 270-263 vote lead, with 7 votes remaining undecided.

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Soma Bhai Patel, a member of the conservative BJP party, announced that he would vote with the government, constituting their 270th vote. They will likely need 271 or 272 to win the trust vote in two days. The opposition now has 264 votes

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About that single sentence, the Lok Sabha, the representative body with the largest constituency in democratic history, has begun to debate. Over the next two days, the various Indian political parties will argue and ultimately confirm or deny its trust in the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and by extension back or oppose the government’s proposed nuclear agreement.

The Prime Minister won a small victory today, securing the abstention of Mamata Banerjee, the sole voting member of the All India Trinamool Conference (AITC), who would otherwise have voted for the opposition, giving the government a legitimate four vote advantage. A Cabinet Minister said that they have 276 votes, 4 more than the amount needed for an absolute majority, and as many as 6 more than the amount needed to win. That account probably includes some members of other parties whose support the Prime Minister is hoping to gain. They are also hoping that as many as nine other opposition voters will join Banerjee and abstain.

The rumors on flipped voting are focused right now on two individual members of parliament, if only somebody would know their names. Tukaram Renge Patil, a member of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena Party (SS. Seriously), has been in hiding, and may be planning either to abstain from the votes or to support the government. Meanwhile, the Times of India is reporting that a member of the conservative BJP Party from Madhya Pradesh will back the government; but provides no names. The BJP has 24 MPs from Madhya Pradesh.

After Mayawati’s dazzling rise this past week, gaining five votes for her Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and becoming a likely Prime Minister should the government fail, she has begun to be attacked by the Congress Party for some ethical lapses. The Communist Party of India (CPI) responded by trying to deemphasize her support, and say that the leadership of the anti-government coalition was coming from them.

In the debates in the Lok Sabha, geopolitics have made their entrance, with External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee saying that the nuclear agreement will be like a “passport” for India, expanding their access to the world community. Sitaram Yuchury, of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) Party, responded by saying it would enter India into the US orbit and force it to attack Iran.

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On an Australian foreign policy blog, there are currently intensive discussions on the necessity for Japan, and by implication other Asian countries, to feel secure about China’s position. What is striking about this is the extent of certain foreign policy discussions, even in countries with very close relations to the United States, that are simply not under discussion here.

As China and India become greater international forces, the United States will become increasingly Pacifically-oriented. This isn’t new. Henry Luce suggested that this would happen as recently as the 1940s. But for all of the attention paid to China and India, however, it might be useful to consider some of the things that Australia, probably our closest ally in the region, is doing.

When the Labor Party’s Kevin Rudd, with his long experience in China and his opposition to the Iraq War, was elected over the conservative John Howard to be its Prime Minister, some took this as to be a crucial sign of a developing relationship between Australia and China and a weakening one with the US. Instead, however, he seems to be charting his own particular course in the region, with highly ambitious goals though few actual accomplishments.

Rudd is trying to make Australia into a regional force, ignoring grave international challenges like the Middle East, and instead proposing some remarkably aggressive plans on his continent, including a potential EU-type organization for Asia. The idea is so ambitious, in fact, that nobody seems to know how to respond. As a rule, most seem to be positive but uncertain.

Though the more ambitious elements of it haven’t - and probably won’t for the forseeable future - he has tried to construct an independent Asia that can handle its own problems. Rudd has taken the opportunity of his close relationship with China to criticize it, particularly on human rights concerns - in Mandarin. While he remains close to China, there are some indications that the Indian-Australian relationship is strengthening too, further confusing and complicating the developing Asian picture

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