Prasun K.Sengupta is usually to be taken with a bucket of salt but here he seems to be bang on the money:
I've already explained above in the narrative uploaded earlier today what this 'interim' order is all about. The haggling was over the 7 & 8 positions of the two negotiating parties & none of the two was willing to budge an inch. Hence the decision to order 36 Rafales, which will cost just as much as the DIFFERENTIAL between 7 & 8. Consequently, the French will be satisfied & scale down to 7, since in any case they have realised their financial goals by bagging the order for the 36 Rafales.
Of course it goes without saying that Indian lethargy & intransigence created all this mess. France after all cannot be blamed for the depreciation of the Indian Rupee vis-a-vis the Euro or US$. So, the longer negotiations & hagglings continue, the greater the cost escalation. This impasse had to be broken & has now been broken. Blame for this sordid state of affairs lies squarely on the shoulders of the UPA-1/UPA-2 govts. Had UPA-1 taken up the French offer for 40 Rafales way back in February 2006, it would have been far more easier to negotiate with a more flexible French party. Bottomline: the French know only too well exactly how the Indian mindset functions & they therefore wanted to spare India all the headaches when making the offer in February 2006. But the stubborn Indians in their all-knowing wisdom ended up being totally f*cked-up.