Prime Minister Dr Singh deserves the unstinting gratitude of the nation for having brought India far enough to make the eventual outcome of the delayed nuclear deal virtually certain, by having the courage to swallow every humilation without flinching from his resolve to see the deal through. By Prem Shankar Jha

Dr Manmohan Singh's announcement that India would approach the IAEA with a draft safeguards agreement for approval  within days of his return from  Japan has lifted the pall of shame that had been gathering around the country ever since the UPA government began to show a willingness  to resile from an agreement that it and its predecessors had been working towards  for more than a decade. Once India has signed the safeguards agreement, it will have completed its obligations under the 2005 treaty with the US. The rest will be up to Washington.

Has India left it too late? Does the fading Bush administration have even the time it needs let alone the influence, to create the consensus required in the Nuclear Suppliers' Group? And even if it succeeds, will it then have the time to steer the 1-2-3- agreement through the US Congress in the very few legislative action days that will be left before the next election? Unsourced remarks by high US officials, reported by the Associated Press, suggest that it may not.

These doubts notwithstanding,  there may still be a sliver of a chance  to complete the deal during the life of the current administration. For one thing, Dr Singh's government has not been idle while Mr Pranab Mukherjee has fought his long drawn out battle to placate  the Left. It has discussed and virtually finalised the details of the safeguards agreement with the IAEA administration. Thus once a special board meeting is convened, the IAEA is likely to lose little time in accepting India's commitments. Both the US and the Indian governments have also been busy 'selling' the nuclear deal to the members of the Nuclear Suppliers' Group.

The great imponderable has always been China, and in a sense this has not changed, for the Chinese press release on President Hu Jintao's meeting with Dr Manmohan Singh in Hokkaido does not contain the explicit reference to nuclear cooperation that the Indian press statement does. But  its overall tone is so positive that it would not be unreasonable to expect China not to stand in the way.

However, even if the worst comes to the worst and all the above steps cannot be completed before the Bush administration ends its term, once India  signs the safeguards agreement the ball will be back in the next US administration's court. And there, despite the threatening noises that have been emanating from the Obama camp, India will find itself with a powerful new ally - Global Warming.

The Toyako G-8  summit saw an acceptance by the Bush administration that the threat from global warming is so serious and so near, that it can no longer afford  the luxury of  abstention from making a common, globally coordinated effort to first stabilise and then redue CO2 emissions drastically by 2050. But the Toyako summit also endorsed a long-held American position that global warming is a planetary issue and every country has to play its part in reducing CO2 emissons.

While the bulk of the current emissions are coming from the 37 industrialised countries, unless something drastic is done, and done very soon, the bulk of the increase in future emissions will come from the developing countries and in particular, from China and India. India may be contributing only 1.2 tonnes of CO2 per person per year, against the US' 20 tonnes. But in absolute terms that still comes to almost 1.5 billion tonnes, which is a  quarter of the US' contribution to the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. 

But if India grows only 6 per cent faster than the US, its total emissions will equal those of the US in a mere 18 years. By then China's will be almost twice those of the US. Thus neither country can hide behind the  veil of underdevelopment  any longer.

To maintain its predicted   eight  per cent rate of  growth,  India will have to increase its power generating capacity by more than 200,000 MW in the next nine years and another 400,000 MW in the next nine years – ie by 600,000 MW before 2026.  If it is forced to rely on coal, then  India alone may add enough CO2 to the atmosphere to tip the world over into a mini-ice age - the fear that every scientist harbours but few dare to articulate.

The alternative is nuclear energy, and for India to access that  the NSG has to get off its high horse first. This is the threat  that neither the NSG nor the next US administration can afford to ignore.

History  has its own internal logic, and this  constrains the choices that leaders make. But in the end it is the latters' exercise of their will, their patience, and  their skills of persuasion,  that decides the former's course. No assessment of India's long drawn out battle to break the shackles of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1970, can be complete without acknowledging the unique contribution that Dr. Manmohan Singh has made to it.

Dr. Singh consciously took decisions – such as to vote against Iran at the IAEA – that went against the grain of Indian policy and Indian sensibilities.  He faced the resulting unrest in the Indian Muslim community, which the Left was quick to exploit, and  the nervousness this created in his own party, and resisted the temptation  to force his point of view on them, or to resign.

Instead he steeled himself and  faced one humiliation after another, as he stuck staunchly  to his purpose. This is a quality of courage and steadfastness that one seldom finds in the leaders of nations.We have still a short way to go so celebration may be premature. But for  having brought India  far enough to make the eventual outcome virtually certain, Dr. Singh deserves the unstinting gratitude of the nation.