A tupenduous example of how government trying to pass a legislation using stealth to put criminally stupid conditions.
This editorial on Hindu captures the pathetic ways in which congress tried to pass the nuclear liability bill:
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article592116.ece?homepage=true
"In a democracy, legislation by stealth will always create a backlash"
"Behind the unseemly word games the Manmohan Singh government has been playing over the language of the proposed nuclear liability bill lies a more dangerous conceit: that complex legislation with the potential to affect the lives of tens of millions of people can simply be pushed through with stealth, subterfuge and the barest minimum of consultation.
Not once but thrice have the government's managers been caught trying to fiddle with the bill in order to address the concerns of nuclear suppliers that are obviously so illegitimate nobody seems to have the political stomach to even try to convince the public about them"
Instead of relying on stealth, the government ought to argue up front why it does not believe suppliers should be indirectly liable for any potential nuclear accident. But its arguments should be grounded in facts and sound analysis, not theology. For example, if suppliers are forced to take out insurance to cover themselves as a result of the Indian law, how much will this affect the cost of a nuclear power project? It is meaningless to argue that no country, not even South Korea, has a law as balanced in its apportioning of liability as India. India is not “any other country.” It plans to buy 20 to 25 large reactors over the next two decades and need not behave as if it is entering a suppliers' market. It is said Indian suppliers will also be reluctant to provide components for our indigenous reactors if the operator can exercise a right of recourse against them. But the fact is that the current legal regime in India exposes suppliers to unlimited liability and that hasn't prevented major Indian corporates from manufacturing products for the NPCIL's reactors around the country.
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