Harish Palaniappan's

The 1 2 3 agreement as it is called, is trying to layout a system of mutual cooperation between the two countries India and United state of America, on the nuclear energy business front.

My reasoning on why it is called 1 2 3:

While India is trying to safeguard its supply of nuclear material for use in generating energy, the Americans are willing to do business based on a lot of terms that they want to put forefront just to ensure 3 things..
> they profit from the business,
> ensure india is a long term client by making it mandatory that india cannot buy nuclear raw material from anybody else unless they buy enough from Americans that will keep the Americans happy,
> and also do this trade the secure way ensuring that India uses the material only and only for generating power.

While India could buy the material for probably cheaper prices from other countries like China, and Russia, they still want to do this with America, for basically 3 reasons.
> so that they make an important trade partnership with the Americans which could garner more support and goodwill with Americans in areas like software outsourcing laws in America, and other trade laws.
> so that they don't create a friction with the Americans by doing the big business with other countries.
> so that Americans consider India a little more important than its neighbours Pakistan and China.. because for Americans China as a rising power is considerably important, and pakistan as a "war on terror" partner is also equally important.

Though all this, and the name 1 2 3 itself looks simple and gives obvious expectations, the deal has been and will be complex... again for 3 reasons
> considering it is a nuclear one,
> considering that the American laws of trade in weapons-capable products or weapons are too many and it is too complex to find a way to work in obeyance of all those laws,
> and further that both the countries know that they are always trying to take advantage of each other and so things have to be carefully worked up.

Amidst all this, with months of negotiations between the two countries, and with almost all top brass of both the governments visiting each other including the president of America and the Prime Minister of India over a period, the 1 2 3 deal finally was worked out.

But, then... they all woke up.. whoever was not in the know that this deal could be a major major trade partnership between India and America. The deal being so sensitive, how can they not talk about it. So they talked and talked to the extent of one side saying 'The American government have sold off their nuclear capacity to India for nothing much in return', while the other side said 'It puts the sovereignty of India in question'.

Whatever they did-doing-will do, they have made the 1 2 3 look a very very odd name.. and my suggestion is changing the name of the deal should help.... (like they do here very often with Tamil movies, changing the name of film, if the censors are too sceptic of giving a go-ahead :o).

And,
Everyone in India knows the fact that those who are fighting against the nuke deal in the parliament, saying things about protecting india's sovereignty and all that, I mean some Members of the Parliament, just don't seem to know what the deal is about..blame it on politics or on their levels of IQ.

Here's a funny take on CNN-IBN channel on how much the MP's understand the deal.

Cyrus broacha's show "The week that wasn't" (also on CNN-IBN) hijacked a karan thapar interview of CPI(M) party's sitaram yechury to make fun.. (It wasn't online at this time of posting, since the show was just published on TV.... but may be it is now updated. Check below link)
http://features.ibnlive.com/show/the-week-that-wasnt.html