INDIA has broken the regional chains and emerged as the new geostrategic force in the world. The paradigm has shifted, the world has adjusted, the rules have changed and the nuclear isolation has ended. That it all happened largely on India's own terms makes the achievement that much more significant. India can maintain its nuclear weapons programme but it can also access nuclear fuel and technology from the world market to feed its energy needs. Many say the five recognised nuclear weapons powers are now de facto the nuclear six but the formal status is irrelevant. After endless hours and many heart-stopping moments of negotiations, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, a cartel created in the 1970s specifically to deny India nuclear technology, agreed on September 6 to give India a waiver from its strict guidelines. The decision formally ended over three decades of denials, and more of bitterness. Those who gaze only at their own political navel do not appreciate how tectonic a shift it is in the calcified thinking of the status quo world where the already powerful rarely accept the newly emerging and advantaged rivals work hard to pretend, postulate and pontificate against the one outside the door. "For the first time," says a senior official, "we have brought the international system to a point where it suits us. India has entered the nuclear mainstream." Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, mysteriously patient and quietly firm, prevailed in the end, winning the confidence vote. He has earned his place in history as the leader who wears two crowns