At an interaction with members of the Editors Guild of India this morning, asked whether the Congress would take Left support to form the next government, Singh said: “We will cross the bridge when we come to it. As of now, I am confident that the Congress would be able to form the government (with allies). I have dealt with the Left parties, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Lalu Prasad, Ram Vilas Paswan, Sharad Pawar. I have dealt with Jayalalithaa, DMK and PMK. I have also negotiated with Mufti Saheb (PDP leader). I have enough experience in dealing with diverse forces,” he said.

Asked about his dealing with the Left until it withdrew support, Singh said: “It was a matter of great privilege (working with them)...I was quite happy working with the Left and Left leaders. I have great respect for their integrity in their personal lives. I was sad that they had to leave on the question of the nuclear deal which they felt very strongly about.”

When asked if the Congress would support the Left in forming the government given that CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat had said the Communists would not support a Congress government, Singh said: “We will deal with this question after the election results are out. But the fact is the present arrangement has worked well.”

Admitting that the emergence of regional parties is a “fact of life,” Singh expressed concern over what he called the hurdle of “growing regionalism” or “states fighting one another”, calling it a major threat to India. Making a forceful case for “parties with a national perspective” — when poverty, terror, Naxalism were the key problems — Singh said “new norms” should be evolved to ensure incorporation of regional parties in governance so that there are “no harmful effects.”

Anticipating inter-state water disputes as a major problem, Singh said states were fighting each other on this issue in the absence of an institutionalised mechanism to deal with it.

India, he said, was one large common market and there were regional parties which interfered with this concept and which could, therefore, create obstacles through tax barriers. “Regionalism may stand in the way of development. The world is moving to common markets and if India is governed by regional parties we may not be able to attain our full growth potential,” he said.

On his war of words with Advani, Singh said that his statements were carefully calibrated. “Day in and day out, BJP leaders described me as a weak PM, subservient to 10, Janpath. I did not respond to L K Advani earlier. When the Congress nominated me as the PM candidate, I thought I owed it to the people, to myself to put forward my five-year record as prime minister,” he said.

“Advani has promised to bring back billions of dollars stashed away in Swiss banks...Ashok Desai has debunked it (the figure of billions that the BJP quoted)...His economics is based on this...it’s disastrous.”

He said that an economic turnaround is likely to begin by September. “I am not an astrologer, it is the informed guess of the people who seem to know,” he said.

On Pakistan, the Prime Minister said: “We cannot choose our neighbours, we need to work towards reconciliation.”

He said that India and Pakistan had almost reached an agreement on outstanding issues in February 2007. “Musharraf said he could not handle too many problems (he was facing the Chief Justice issue)...We had nearly got Pakistan to agree (to our line),” he said.

Asked why he said he would have quit if the nuclear deal fell through, Singh said: “We had negotiated for three years, we had resolved all issues to India’s satisfaction. We had worked hard to line up 45 NSG countries (to support the deal). After all this, if the government had said, ‘No, thank you, we will not touch this,’ it would have been a disaster, a calamity. India’s honour was at stake.”