Victor adds that the Indian PM is of the view that nuclear capacity can be built up faster post-deal: 40 GW of new nuclear capacity by 2015. That has even more radical emission reduction implications.

It also has radical realpolitik implications. India rapidly reduces coal dependency for power generation and therefore CO2 emissions, thanks to a US-sponsored deal that recognises its strategic-economic potential. But it also keeps insisting that it’s too poor to agree to emission cuts. And, having now indicated that it no longer considers any emission protocol an anti-American conspiracy, the US’s patience with India’s negotiating position is likely to wear very thin very fast.

Already, Western negotiators have started talking about India hiding behind its poor. More important, it is jeopardising its own global standing by invoking the aam aadmi version of the emissions control argument.

A McKinsey report — one of several similar studies coming to the same broad conclusion — says India’s middle class will expand to 600 million over the next decade. Roughly in the middle of the next ten years — 2012 — the Kyoto Protocol will expire. The coming together of increasing mass prosperity in India and the end game of negotiating a post-Kyoto treaty will make this country look like a typical third world double talker.

There are plenty of other critical global negotiations where India will need to exert its weight as a confident middle-income power. Realpolitik demands that it be consistent. In any case, can’t the government see that pleading poverty when India’s middle class is going to be 600 million-strong is a national disservice?

... contd.