It is a tough job being foreign minister (Capital Buzz)
New Delhi, July 26 (Inditop.com) If there is one thing common between Minister for External Affairs S.M. Krishna and his predecessor Pranab Mukherjee, it is their propensity to work 24×7. The only difference is that while Mukherjee seemed to be enjoying all that whirligig, Krishna looks like a reluctant foreign minister thrust into the high profile job.
Just hours after holding talks with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 77-year-old gentleman-politician made a statement in parliament on Clinton’s visit and then headed straight to the airport to fly to Thai island resort Phuket for the India-ASEAN ministerial meeting.
In Phuket, a laidback seaside resort popular with backpackers and honeymooners, Krishna had back-to-back official engagements for the next 36 hours, barring six hours of sleep in between.
He held bilateral talks with eight foreign ministers – of China, Russia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand – besides attending three multilateral meetings. In between, he packed in brief interactions with accompanying media.
At the end of it all, he looked a little tired, but did not disappoint journalists travelling in his Embraer special aircraft, holding a half-hour interaction, answering questions on just about every issue ranging from Pakistan and the Clinton visit to the plight of refugees in Sri Lanka.
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Now the B Word
Once upon a time there was something called the K word (Kashmir) that triggered spontaneous and predictable reaction from the mandarins in South Block, the seat of India’s foreign ministry.
Now the B word is the new bad word. Say B and you get stares as though you have dropped a bomb.
We have nothing to hide, we are an open book, is all you get when you ask the diplomats how Balochistan found its way into the July 16 India-Pakistan joint statement. And although they don’t say it in so many words, the private joke doing the rounds is that Sharm-el-Sheikh has become a matter of sharm (shame) for some of them.
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Whodunit?
It’s a murder mystery in search of an author. Perhaps no diplomatic document has inspired so much curiosity about its author as the July 16 India-Pakistan joint statement.
Who drafted it? – journalists and hawks are asking with murderous gleams in their eyes.
Ask any of the big ones who were present at the Red Sea resort on that fateful day when India decided to ‘delink’ terrorism from the composite dialogue, and they say without batting an eyelid – ‘Not me’. Clearly, one or more of them drafted it and now with the knives out they all want to disown the joint statement.
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Dada versus Didi
The otherwise quiet and no-nonsense Minister of State for Finance S.S. Palanimanickam came up with an interesting line in the Lok Sabha when an MP wondered why there was a discrepancy in the minimum age of senior citizens for several of the government’s programmes.
Finance Minister Pranab ‘Dada’ Mukherjee says it should be 65, but Railway Minister Mamata ‘Didi’ Banerjee insists it is 60. This anomaly has been carried into Dada’s and Didi’s budgets that were presented in the ongoing parliament session.
Palanimanickam said: “One is based on health and another is based on wealth.”
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Unkept promise
As Nirupama Rao returns from her post as India’s Ambassador to China to take over as foreign secretary on Aug 1, another contender for the top diplomat’s post, Nalin Surie, will have to settle for being the high commissioner in London.
Surie is replacing Shiv Shankar Mukherjee, who is retiring, having failed to get an extension. He had apparently been assured by former external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee that he would get an extension if Pranab ‘Dada’ returned as foreign minister after the election.
But now Pranab Mukherjee has been replaced by S.M. Krishna, and the promise could not be kept.
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Tweeting the blues away
It’s two months since Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor has been inducted into the council of ministers, but he is still to get into a ministerial bungalow.
The reason: the bungalow in Lodi Estate that has been allotted to him needs a lot of dismantling of walls and reconstruction because its previous occupant, a minister in the previous government, effectively used it as a guest house for his voters. Government engineers found it full of illegal construction and cubby holes built to accommodate as many house guests as possible.
Tharoor, who lives alone in New Delhi as his wife is still in New York while his children study in Europe, continues to operate out of his Taj Mahal hotel suite -tweeting away the blues.
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At ease in Delhi
Talking of tweeting, Shashi Tharoor continues to follow his passion for social networking – and amazingly finds time for it despite his packed ministerial duties. He is up early, spends a lot of time communicating with the outside world through e-mail, Facebook and Twitter, eats frugally (he is a vegetarian) and insists to his aides that as far as possible they should communicate to him through e-mail, reducing paperwork to the bureaucratic minimum.
Tharoor seems to be enjoying his transition from New York’s high life to New Delhi’s bureaucracy and finds himself with a constant stream of visitors from morning to evening wanting to interact with this versatile diplomat, author, communicator and rookie politician.
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Shutterbug politician
BJP leader Vijay Goel, who lost the recent poll from the New Delhi constituency, believes there is a life beyond politics. Normally in the forefront of all agitations in the city, be it on water, metro and power problems, Goel decided to take a break and head off for a 45-day family vacation to South Africa.
His passion for photography is high and he made the best use of his sojourn capturing that country’s wildlife. Back now after the break, Goel is holding an exhibition to showcase his photographic talent.
This is not Goel’s first photo showing. Apparently his fascination for photography was kindled while restoring his haveli in Anandpur village near Sonepat in Haryana.
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Out in the cold
Former home minister Shivraj Patil, who had to resign from the union cabinet following criticism in the wake of the 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, was expected to be back in the reckoning and be appointed a governor. But the list announced last week had Margaret Alva, Jagannath Pahadia and Devendra Nath Dwivedi only.
The sartorially elegant Patil, once known for his proximity to Congress president Sonia Gandhi, is still hoping to be rehabilitated. Patil, 73, is currently a Rajya Sabha MP from Maharashtra and has only one year left of his current term in the upper house. The grapevine has it that a desperate Patil is now sending feelers to 10 Janpath.
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Iron curtain at Marxist bastion
After their crushing defeat in the Lok Sabha elections and the existential crisis within the party, the Communists, one would have thought, would be humbled and on the mend. But no such luck.
In their latest diktat, the party leadership has put a blanket ban on cameramen entering the party headquarters at A.K. Gopalan Bhavan in the capital before crucial meetings. The apparent reason is that at a politburo meeting last month an industrious cameraman videographed a member reading some important papers.
The information in the document was relayed to the press corps standing outside and several reporters in the 24×7 business, thirsty for any morsel, ran it as breaking news. This infuriated the senior guard when they came to know about the leak. Since then, the politburo has decided not to allow any photojournalist before their meetings, fearing further leaks.