{"id":11257,"date":"2011-11-17T17:11:31","date_gmt":"2011-11-17T17:11:31","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-11-17T17:11:27","modified_gmt":"2011-11-17T17:11:27","slug":"Hey-U-S--Maybe-India-s-Trying-to-Tell-You-No-","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=11257","title":{"rendered":"Hey U.S., Maybe India\u2019s Trying to Tell You \u201cNo\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Watching the tortured, drawn-out negotiations between the U.S. and India over civil nuclear energy cooperation, you get the feeling India is trying to deliver a simple message \u2013 \u201cno\u201d \u2013 and the U.S. just isn\u2019t getting the drift. The latest development: India has put in place regulations it says will limit the liability of nuclear plant suppliers in the event of accidents. That\u2019s supposed to address a key American concern, but on its face it doesn\u2019t appear to be a huge breakthrough. The U.S. was pushing for a redo of the nuclear law that India\u2019s Parliament passed last year to fully indemnify equipment suppliers like GE Hitachi and Toshiba-Westinghouse, as per international standards.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many Americans have learned how to interpret the Indian head waggle \u2013 the ambiguous shake-nod that generally connotes \u201cyes.\u201d But even the most culturally savvy Americans don\u2019t realize that sometimes saying \u201cyes\u201d is just a way to avoid the inevitable confrontation that comes with saying \u201cno.\u201d Consequently, figuring out that you\u2019re being rejected isn\u2019t always straightforward. Ask the air-conditioning repairman if he can deliver your unit back in two days. \u201cYes, no problem,\u201d he\u2019ll respond. What he really wants to say: you\u2019re nuts, it\u2019ll take at least a week. Try to recruit a worker for your company, and he might express keen interest but then keep peppering you with questions and concerns for months on email. What he really wants to say: I\u2019m taking another job, buddy. Invite friends to a dinner party, and even the definite no-shows will insist until the end that they might come. <\/p>\n

Delivering a dis, in other words, can be a nuanced art. Diplomacy is no different. India keeps telling the U.S. that the civil nuclear pact is important and it wants to address U.S. concerns about liability. But it clearly has no intention of changing the Indian liability law. After meeting Friday with President Obama on the sidelines of a conference in Bali, Prime Minister Manmohan told reporters he was willing to address U.S. concerns on liability \u201cwithin the four corners of the law of the land.\u201d Translation: forget about overhauling the existing nuclear liability law. A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in New Delhi said the U.S. government is still reviewing the new nuclear rules and has no comment on whether they address the concerns of U.S. suppliers. The Nuclear Energy Institute, a Washington-based nuclear industry trade group, also declined to comment.<\/p>\n

The U.S.-India nuclear deal was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 2008 and was held up as a cornerstone of the burgeoning \u201cstrategic partnership\u201d between the countries. But one has to wonder how serious India is about making it a reality. Every critical step \u2013 meeting India\u2019s demands for reprocessing nuclear fuel, getting India to sign an international nuclear damages convention, awarding actual nuclear sites, and this liability issue \u2013 has been painstaking and delay-ridden. Power-outage-plagued India needs all the electricity generation it can get \u2013 coal-fired, hydro, and yes, nuclear, too. But anti-nuclear protests in India and this year\u2019s nuclear disaster in Japan only emboldened critics who say nuclear power isn\u2019t safe. Meanwhile, the political opposition in India, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, already thinks the nuclear deal is a sell-out to the Americans. Maybe New Delhi is getting cold feet, and maybe it\u2019s trying to deliver a delicate rejection to the U.S? The U.S. would do well to listen.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

SOURCE<\/a>
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Watching the tortured, drawn-out negotiations between the U.S. and India over civil nuclear energy cooperation, you get the feeling India<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1213,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Joshua","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/62ee23f8f40307578d1f284ecd823d77f32da8ea35541e7dbdafeb5da1a4e877?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"2","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"Watching the tortured, drawn-out negotiations between the U.S. and India over civil nuclear energy cooperation, you get the feeling India","magazineBlocksPostCategories":[],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":161,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":3,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Joshua","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1213"},"magazine_blocks_comment":2,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/62ee23f8f40307578d1f284ecd823d77f32da8ea35541e7dbdafeb5da1a4e877?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1213"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}