New Delhi, June 20 (IANS) Guess who is fast becoming a favourite of the diplomatic circuit, not to speak of India’s own foreign office? Vice President Hamid Ansari. The reason is he is rather well versed in delicate art of international diplomacy.
Foreign ministry officials who travel with him find he knows much more than they can tell him!
No wonder the government is using him more and more to promote India’s interests in key and neglected regions whose demands go much beyond the symbolism and ceremony associated with visits by the president and the vice president.
Last month Ansari made the first high-level visit by an Indian government leader to Croatia and was received by none less than the country’s president in a rare gesture.
Ansari is, after all, a former member of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) who has served in top positions for India around the world, including as India’s Permanent Representative to the UN.
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Caste against Congress’ past?
If the Congress-led government decides to go ahead with the inclusion of caste in the census, it may be seen as a step against the advice of its own prominent past leaders, as two telling quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru indicate.
Their quotes on caste and regionalism have appeared in the latest issue of the fortnightly journal, The Supreme Saviour. While Nehru talks of narrow conflicts in the name of religion, province, caste and language and the need for a classless and casteless society, Rajiv Gandhi’s quote is more direct.
‘We proclaim and celebrate the unity of India… But is it not also a fact that most of us, in our daily lives, do not think of ourselves as Indians? We see ourselves as Hindus, Muslims and Christians, Malayalis, Maharashtrians, Bengalis. Worse, we think of ourselves as Brahmins, Thakurs, Jats, Yadavs and so on and so forth.’
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Friend or foe
A friend indeed in times of need! Or at least that is how minister Prithviraj Chavan would have liked to see Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad to at an interaction with women journalists.
Chavan, who was speaking at the Indian Women’s Press Corps on the Bhopal gas tragedy, came under scathing attack from panelist Dipankar Mukherjee of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), N.D. Jayaprakash of the Bhopal Gas Peedit Sangharsh Samiti and, of course, journalists.
When the moderator asked Prasad to give his views on the issue, he asked, ‘I have a caveat that I have been invited to the discussion in what capacity — as a lawyer, BJP spokesperson or BJP general secretary.’
Even before Prasad could finish, Chavan suggested helpfully – ‘As my good friend’. It was another story that Prasad responded simply as a political foe.
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Size matters when it glitters
Botswana, a tiny country of 1.8 million people bordering South Africa, is not a country that would have in the normal course come on the diplomatic radar of a country of the size of India and its 1.2 billion people.
But its democracy, good governance and the fact that it is the world’s largest diamond producer have propelled it to being among India’s diplomatic priorities.
This year there has been an exchange of high level visits between the two with Vice President Mohammed Hamid Ansari going there and then Botswana Vice President Lt Gen Mompati Sebogodi Merathe making a return visit in less than six months.
At a banquet in his honour at Hyderabad House last week, the large Botswana delegation found it difficult to come to terms with India’s size.
When told that Delhi itself, with more 17 million population, can probably accommodate 10 Botswanas, a woman Botswana official shook her head and said: ‘Size does matter, but then who accommodates is the question.’
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Bhopal blues for x-diplomat
The man who finally revealed the mystery behind ‘safe passage’ to Union Carbide boss Warren Anderson had a tough time in the past week.
Ever since Gordon Streeb, then US deputy chief of mission, disclosed that Anderson came to India Dec 7, 1984 only after being assured of a safe passage and named him as his chief interlocutor, M.K. Rasgotra, then foreign secretary, suddenly found himself deluged with calls from journalists.
For two days he kept silent after the story broke, with his secretary trying his best to keep them at bay, but when the buzz spread that the octagenarian ex-diplomat had given an interview to Karan Thapar, media hounds tried their luck again, but to no avail.
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India-Pakistan paper work
Eleven dossiers on 26/11 and counting! When India responded to six dossiers given by Pakistan nearly two months ago Friday, Deputy High Commissioner Riffat Masood was not amused.
‘It contains some documents. A lot of paper,’ was all Masood, who is heading to Los Angeles as Pakistan’s consul-general, would say after being called to South Block.
The buzz is that Masood, who has been in New Delhi for more than three years, is just waiting to get out of the India-Pakistan rigmarole. ‘Nothing happens much in India-Pakistan relations. It’s so sad,’ he lamented recently.
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Rain, rain, go away?
Everybody wants a good monsoon, but not the Delhi government – at least not this year.
Officials say most of the Commonwealth Games projects are due to be completed by June, July or even August, and these months coincide with the rains. A heavy downpour will be a hindrance in their timely completion.
Officials said this fear has added to the woes of Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, who discussed this with her ministers. In turn, says an official source, she was told: ‘There is nothing to worry mam. Let the monsoon come in July or August, we will complete the work latest by September.’
Never mind that the mega event begins in October.
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VIP’s car? Cool it
Escalating petrol prices don’t seem to be a worry for MPs and ministers. After all, it is free of cost for them. At least that seemed to be the case at a five-star hotel where a state education ministers’ meeting was on.
A traffic snarl in the hotel portico caught everyone’s attention. Two cars with MP labels pasted on the windscreen were parked there, with their engines running and no sign of the drivers. There were whispers that the cars belonged to Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal. But the hotel guards remained tight-lipped.
‘It is a VIP vehicle,’ was the only reply from a guard, but he added that his orders were clear – to allow the airconditioning in the cars to run so that the VIP would only have to step out of the hotel and into the cool environs of the vehicle.
‘Waiting for a minister or MP is fine, but with the engines running? And then the government talks about austerity,’ a hotel guest was heard complaining.
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Leg work for African diplomat
A diplomat from an eastern African country recounted how a persistent vague pain in his legs had prompted him to go to premier hospital in Delhi when he first came as part of a delegation.
‘I was told that my legs will finally stop working,’ he said. Shocked, he refused to believe the diagnosis of the Indian doctors for immediate operation.
He went back home and within two months, could not get out of bed. Luckily, there was a vacancy in the New Delhi mission, where he was transferred. ‘The first thing I did after getting out of the airport was to go straight to the hospital,’ he reminisced.
Now guess what his pet project is? To take the experience and insight of Indian doctors to Africa.
