Those who have been closely following  the debate on the Indo-US nuclear deal may have noticed one peculiarity. The limelight on this issue in the media has been almost monopolised by spokesmen from the Left political parties, Left-leaning columnists and intellectuals, and other anti-establishment activists.

Many of these, it must be admitted, are highly articulate, clever in penmanship and astute in exploiting sound bytes on television.

The government, on the other hand, has abandoned advocacy for the deal mostly to past and present stalwarts of the Indian nuclear establishment who may be earnest but are not comfortable before the camera and tend to be long-winded in their written presentations on the opinion pages of newspapers. Consequently, they do not carry conviction with the lay person.

Strangely, the Congress has chosen not to exploit the considerable debating talent it has in its political armoury, like Manishankar Iyer, Jairam Ramesh, Kapil Sibal, Renuka Chowdhry and others, who can catch the attention of the viewer and maintain it.

But instead of deploying such persons to combat the guile of Karat, Yechury and Co, the government has blundered by using people like Manmohan Singh and Pranab Mukherhjee who are no doubt senior in the line up but deficient in terms of articulation. They do not come out clear, concise or convincing.

Besides the wrong choice of spokespersons, the government has mishandled its end of the nuclear deal debate in several other crucial ways. It must be able to convince the public about the righteousness of its stand. By not presenting the full range of facts in the first instance, it has allowed the opposing parties to conduct the debate on their own terms.

The fundamental trigger for the deal, as far as India was concerned, was to gain access to foreign uranium. This is because we do not have sufficient domestic uranium ore reserves to meet the requirements of our planned expansion in nuclear power generation capacity.

The nuclear deal is crucial to meeting our future energy demands, by extricating us from the international blockade of nuclear materials to which we were consigned to after the Pokhran test of 1974.

This was the simple initial premise. If the government had handled its public relations properly, it would have issued a White Paper (with good graphics) on the issue in the beginning itself, giving all the relevant facts, such as the future world energy scenario, a projection of India’s rising energy needs and the manner in which the nuclear deal would contribute. The paper could also have clarified that China is on a major expansion spree in its nuclear power capacity.

Such a frank position paper would have cleared up a lot of misconceptions in the minds of the public about our ability to blithely carry on as we are and thumb our noses at the Nuclear Suppliers Group. It would have made it difficult for the Opposition to hijack the debate from what is basically a plain energy supply initiative into obfuscating ideology, as well as helped the media form questions and opinionate experts away from blind acceptance.

It is still not too late for the government to come out with this White Paper and, with the help of properly informed and primed spokesmen, counter all the red herrings cast by the Opposition. It is imperative that the public understands and backs the deal so that the government is emboldened to go ahead with it.

For, the alternative would spell slow death for our nuclear power programme and put to nought the heroic effort that our nuclear scientists, engineers and technicians have made in reviving the programme after the body blow it received in the form of the sudden cessation of all Western technical assistance following the 1974 test.

Sure, the American nuclear industry may gain a market if the deal goes through, though it will have stiff competition from France, Japan, Russia and others. But without the deal, our elaborate three-stage nuclear power plan will have to be aborted. That is the message that the government has to communicate to the Indian public.