INDIA: Communists may be an anachronism in many parts of the world, but in India they are not only flourishing but have emerged as the major political force instrumental in influencing the future of the world's largest democracy.
After their best ever performance in India's recently concluded elections, India's Communist Party of India (Marxist) the CPM and the Communist Party of India (CPI) have become the principal architects behind the federal coalition being created around Ms Sonia Gandhi's Congress party that will assume office this week.
The Communists won 63 parliamentary seats, their highest ever electoral tally after independence 57 years ago.
Armed with letters of support from her pre-poll allies, the Communists from either inside government or outside it and the backing of several other parties, the Italian-born Ms Gandhi is meeting President A P J Abdul Kalam today to stake her claim to form the government.
After days of negotiations headed by revered Marxist leader Harkishen Singh Surjeet, the prime minister-in-waiting is confident of securing the support of over 272 MPs that is required for a majority in the 545-member parliament.
The Congress-led alliance will be replacing prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist-led coalition of 24 parties that suffered a humiliating defeat in the elections for ignoring millions of India's poor and cossetting the affluent.
Ms Gandhi is expected to be sworn in as the country's first foreign-born prime minister on Wednesday. Thereafter, she will have to prove her majority in the House an affirmation that, for the moment, is not in doubt, due mainly to the manoeuvrings of Surjeet, the 90-year old CPM general secretary and the epitome of a copy-book Communist from the 1990s.
Surjeet has indefatigably worked, following the surprise electoral results, at persuading recalcitrant, ambitious politicians to unite in a stable, secular alliance against the Hindu nationalists.
He had acted as 'king maker' in the mid-1990s when another coalition government fell, but he has neither a lust for power nor ambition for high office. His reputation for honesty, in one of the most corrupt political systems, like that of many of his fellow Communists remains unimpeachable.
Investors, however, fear the Communists will block or slow ongoing economic reforms, especially the sale of bloated, monolithic state-owned conglomerates most of which routinely register losses.
India's Communists - in power in Bengal for over 25 years and sporadically in southern Kerala state since independence - have duplicated Chinese-style reforms wherever they govern.
But they attempted to placate Friday's plunging financial markets at the weekend by claiming that they welcomed foreign investment as no country could "quarantine" itself from the globalised economy any more.
CPM's economic guru, Sitaram Yechuri, said foreign investment was welcome, provided it augmented India's existing productive capacities and upgraded technology.
India's burgeoning military and security relations with the US and Israel are also expected to undergo a review - some fear a slow down - under Communist influence.