THE DECISION by India's communists to withdraw parliamentary support from the governing alliance led by the Congress Party over its nuclear deal with the United States will increase preparations for next year's general elections, rather than precipitating them immediately.
Prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh has found alternative support from the smaller regional Samajwadi party and expects to make up the numbers easily enough. He has no desire to face the voters during the current inflationary surge and before he brings the benefits arising from the US energy deal to consumers this autumn.
It should be remembered that one of the Congress Party's principal pledges in the 2004 elections was to bring electricity to hundreds of thousands of poor villagers left out of the country's economic recovery in the 1990s. Many of these promises have been made good over the last four years in a huge rural electrification programme; but supply is uneven. While most of India's energy needs has come from coal, an increasing proportion will be available from nuclear power when this agreement is rolled out. The communists object to it saying they are "against the strategic embrace and the hegemonic ambitions of the world's biggest imperial power". Dr Singh dismisses their objection as power without responsibility, since they were not willing to join the coalition government in 2004.
India and the US reached an arrangement on nuclear co-operation in 2006 in a major realignment of the country's foreign policy. India's nuclear weapons system was developed mainly in relation to its conflict with Pakistan, putting it outside the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, cut off from scrutiny by the International Atomic Energy Agency and the more commercial Nuclear Supplies Group. The Bush administration saw the need to develop a balancing role for India with China in the Asian region. It was willing to help it out of this isolation in return for such a shift in political focus.
Dr Singh's calculation is that this is in India's long -term interest and will also deliver tangible economic benefits. It will take some months for India to plug in to these regulatory bodies. Dr Sing faces an uphill political task in finding durable allies for next year's elections. But the main opposition Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has made gains in regional elections and is confident of doing well nationally. They do not oppose this move and may indeed hope to gain from it should they win next year.