The 123 agreement has nothing to do with energy

Nuclear power contributes less than 3 % of India’s energy consumption basket. Even if the most optimistic projections work out the figure is not expected to rise beyond 8 to 10% by 2020.

The share of this may be a key factor in India’s long term energy basket but for the short and medium term, there is no getting away from the conventional sources. Put another way the nuclear deal with the US might be welcome as an additionality, the more pressing task for Indian energy diplomacy is to work in tandem with our neighbourhood and extended neighbourhood to ensure stable supply of oil and gas.

Indeed the challenge is to harmonize the short and medium term with the long term so that there are no zero sum games. India needs to have a constructive energy relationship with the US, Iran, China, Russia, CIS,Myanmar.

If increased access to nuclear reactors comes at the expense of the diminished access to other forms of energy, the gains will get cancelled.

The nuclear deal is about a strategic partnership extending to business and technology. The deal will help India to be absorbed into the world order as a major power, which till now has not been completely possible. And not only the Indian establishment is not used to think about the world in strategic or structural terms.

Nicholas Burns wrote in an article that :India is likely to be one of our two or three most important partners” in the years to come on a par presumably with the top two-UK and Japan.
There are 4 deliverables that the US has in mind:
1) The least objectionable one is that to bring India out of its self imposed isolation to a nuclear deal which will help the US companies to make billions from the reactor business.
2) The defense relationships to be established to respond to the global contingencies like the post Tsunami naval effort by India, US,Australia and Japan.
3) The 126 advanced fighters India is to buy.
4) To participate India in multilateral military operations and undertakings not the sort of Iraqi type.
5) Also an energy type with CIS states to ensure supply of oil and gas there by excluding IranThis factor has of course been taken by Russia and China during the trilateral meeting with India.
6) Isolation of Iran at any cost.