However, the time has come for the PM and the Congress to take a final call on the deal. The draft agreement with the IAEA requires one more meeting before the India-specific safeguards are locked and put up to the nuclear watchdog’s board for approval. Given the state of political play, the PM knows very well that even if he junks the nuclear deal, it will not stop the Left from breathing down his neck for the remaining period of his government.

It is not only the Congress that has to bite the bullet on the nuclear deal. The situation in the other national party, the BJP, is no different. The BJP has still not been able to harmonise its policies with the aspirations of its core constituency in the growing middle class. The unwritten rule is that the economic uplift of the rural masses to largely urban aspirations is in the interest of the BJP. Yet, the BJP’s Uttar Pradesh state president, Ramai Ram Tripathi, inexplicably, wants to launch a ‘Ram aur Ganga Bachao Andolan’ against Mayawati’s Ganga Expressway project. Tripathi, a Rajnath Singh acolyte, obviously has got his development paradigm all wrong as per capita income gains due to increased economic opportunities will give electoral gains to his party and not to the ostensibly pro-poor Congress.

At a time when the BJP’s prime-ministerial candidate, L.K. Advani, talks about his party being on a “comeback trail”, the party will have to do some serious introspection on its stand on the nuclear deal. The stated party position that it will renegotiate the nuclear deal with the US if it comes to power at the Centre does not hold water. Advani may rebuff all overtures from Manmohan Singh for support on the nuclear deal but the BJP must explain on what basis it will renegotiate it and with whom in the US. The fact is that there is serious pressure building within the party to have a relook at its stance on the deal as the core BJP voter is in favour of strategic engagement with the US and the nuclear agreement.

... contd.