India's government has cleared the way for a controversial nuclear deal with the United States, which it says could help bring millions out of poverty.
After two days of often chaotic debate, the Congress-led coalition won a confidence vote in the Indian parliament by 275 MPs to 256 from the mainly left-wing and Hindu opposition.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh needed just a simple majority to keep his vision of modernising India intact and see through the last year of his mandate.
Had he failed, the world's largest democracy would have headed into early elections, with his opponents emboldened.
"This has sent an important message to the world that India is ready to take its rightful place in the committee of nations," Singh said after the vote.
Energy-hungry India, he said, was now free to "operate on the frontiers of modern science and technology" by emerging from three decades of international sanctions blocking its access to nuclear fuel.
The agreement, unveiled in 2005, will allow the United States to sell nuclear plants and related technology to India once it has separated its civil and military programs and accepted a certain level of UN inspections.
"It is all about widening our development options, promoting energy security in a manner which will not hurt our precious environment and which will not contribute to pollution and global warming," Singh said.
Supplies of nuclear fuel and modern technology could bring some relief for India, blighted by dilapidated infrastructure.
The national grid cannot keep pace with increased ownership of air conditioners, and power cuts are frequent - with businesses large and small forced to shell out large amounts of money for power back-up solutions.
This, the prime minister argued, has been holding the country back from reaching the kind of double-digit growth needed to lift hundreds of millions of people out of "chronic poverty, ignorance and disease."
"A basic requirement for achieving this order of growth is the availability of energy," said Singh, whose government is struggling to sustain heavy fuel subsidies in the face of soaring crude prices.
