Mani McGrill, Served Hot

The long awaited cabinet reshuffle could have been dismissed as an exercise in coalition housekeeping and rewarding of the faithful, had it not been for one significant change of portfolio. This was the removal of Mani Shankar Aiyar from the petroleum ministry and the appointment of fund-raising party loyalist Murli Deora to this immensely sensitive post. Twenty months ago, when Aiyar was asked to take this portfolio besides panchayati raj (with which he has a father-son relationship since he drafted the relevant constitutional amendment bill for the late PM Rajiv Gandhi), his objections were brushed aside on the grounds that he was one minister on whose integrity the party could place complete faith.

In the past year, Aiyar had demonstrated that honesty is only one of his virtues. The others are—an instinctive understanding of the geopolitics of oil, a capacity to plan years ahead in a shrinking and incredibly competitive oil market, and a decisiveness in action that is alien to Indian politics. So, why was Aiyar moved? One answer could be that this accumulation of virtues broke the iron law of mediocrity that governs Indian politics. His successor, Murli Deora, fits the bill perfectly.

But there is another possibility whose mere contemplation fills me with shame. Aiyar may have been moved because a side-effect of the long-term energy security plans he was beginning to implement would have been to change the global balance of power away from the US. Aiyar was not only determined to push ahead with the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, to which the US had voiced strong objection on the ground that it would impede its efforts to isolate Iran, but he was actively putting in place an Asian gas grid that would link India with Iran, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, China and Myanmar. In addition, Aiyar had infused new vigour into India's efforts to acquire shares in oil fields abroad and, most troubling to the US, had signed an agreement with China that would enable the state-owned oil companies of the two countries to bid jointly for companies, concessions and oil fields in other countries in the future.

If these plans had matured unhindered, they would have cemented a relationship between the two biggest oil consumers of the near future and the most important producers of oil and gas outside West Asia. The entire Asian region, from Russia till China and Sri Lanka would have gained a level of economic self-sufficiency that would have been translated by degrees into greater political autonomy. With the American, North Sea and West Asian oil reserves having begun to dwindle, this would have culminated in a loss of control of this vital market that would have knocked out the underpinnings of US and EU global political dominance. This could hardly have been what Aiyar had had in mind, but with a characteristic panache, he had managed to rock some very big boats in a very short time.

I would have been reluctant to give any credence to this theory had I not heard, bare hours before the cabinet reshuffle was announced, that Aiyar was almost certainly being deprived of the petroleum ministry because, while no one doubted his brilliance or probity, he had been taking decisions that had "foreign policy implications" without the clearance of the appropriate authorities. The source of this "explanation", I was told, was the pmo. Since two officials directly concerned with reconciling oil and foreign policy told me that the allegation was totally untrue, I concluded that it was a red herring designed to distract attention from the true reason for the decision. This was our overpowering desire to fall in line with the American policies—a desire that turned into hunger after the July 18 agreement and is turning into an obsession as the Bush visit draws near. My suspicions hardened when Deora's first observation after being sworn in was that there were many difficulties with the Iran-India gas pipeline project.

Suspicions do not amount to certainty. It is still possible that the unnamedPMO official was flying a kite on his own, and that Aiyar asked to be relieved of the oil portfolio in order to concentrate on panchayati raj and sports. But in politics, perception is reality. It doesn't matter what Manmohan Singh or Sonia Gandhi had in mind. All that matters is how Iran, China and Pakistan, not to mention Russia, are going to interpret the portfolio change. On that, no one should harbour any doubts. The only conclusion they can come to is the one I have outlined above.

New Delhi's anxiety to cement a close relationship with the US springs partly from its determination to break the informal ban on the supply of dual use technology imposed by the Nuclear Suppliers' Group and partly from the desire to take its rightful place, alongside China, in the future international order. But it does need to ask itself whether a policy of surrender to the US at every turn is the best way of achieving these goals. On the one hand, it is far from sure that the July agreement will go through. Not only is the US Congress in no mind to let it through, but there's a gap between what the Indians want to keep outside the IAEA safeguards, and what the US is prepared to concede to.

On the other hand, getting closer to the US and EU will distance India not only from Iran but more importantly from China, Pakistan and Myanmar, all of whom consider themselves targets and potential victims of the renascent US imperialism. Anti-Americanism, therefore, runs very high in all of them. Unless it strikes a delicate balance between these conflicting goals of foreign policy, India could end by losing more than it gains. Putting Aiyar out to pasture was definitely not the way to do so.