Column

US assistant secretary Richard Boucher will be remembered in the annals of South Block as a star-crossed visitor to India. The last time he was here, he ran into a cold wind buffeting Indo-US engagement because of perceived American pussyfooting over helping India gain entry into the exclusive nuclear club. Consequently, none of the mandarins in the foreign office wanted to meet him.

Last week, he again ran into an arctic winter in South Block. Maybe our mandarins saw red because he came armed with a Hilal-i-Qaid-i-Azam medal from Pakistan. Or maybe it’s the Bush administration’s not-so-encouraging response to Indian calls for help in tackling the terror menace from Pakistan. Boucher got just a few minutes with foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon before he was passed down to the desk officer for the US, Gayathri Kumar. He got none of the courtesies bestowed on visitors from Washington, like a call on the external affairs minister or prime minister.

It seems the government has decided that it’s not worth investing time in an outgoing administration. Manmohan Singh himself is believed to have remarked that he doesn’t expect much from a presidentpacking to leave.

As Boucher must have realised, emotions are swinging wildly here in New Delhi as the government grapples with a growing sense of frustration over the blank signals from Washington. With the world superpower in transition between George W Bush and Barack Obama, the Indo-Pak standoff is stuck in that grey zone called No Man’s Land.

Bush doesn’t want to burn his hands on the eve of his departure from the White House and Obama has refused to touch the South Asia hot potato till he’s safely
ensconced in the Oval Office. With all processes in a state of suspended animation till January 20 when Obama takes the oath of office, it was perhaps natural that the government thought it useless to engage with Boucher.

The same logic was behind the polite refusal to host vice president-elect Joe Biden on his last fling as outgoing chairman of the Senate foreign affairs committee. It was conveyed to Biden’s office that the congressional fact-finding mission he was leading to this part of the world made little sense at transition time. The view from Islamabad is clearly quite different.

The government there presented both Boucher and Biden with prized civilian awards for their contribution to Pakistan! It was like a farewell gift. Pakistan is especially indebted to Biden for piloting legislation for a massive dose of financial aid to save its floundering economy. There are far too many ties that gag and bind the US and Pakistan. One wonders why successive governments here are unable to come to terms with this reality and insist on looking to Washington to resolve India’s Pakistan problem.

TAILPIECE
Those who follow internecine battles within the Congress have joined some curious dots to come up with an explanation for Pranab Mukherjee’s apparently off-the-cuff remark that Rahul Gandhi is following in the footsteps of his father who became PM at 40. It seems, at the recent Pravasi Diwas meet in Chennai, the PMO’s seating plan for the dais did not include a place for Mukherjee. Instead, he was made to sit down below with the audience, albeit in the front row. But he ended up stealing the limelight with his R-bomb.

Was it a calculated strategy? Some in the Congress believe it was, if only to reinforce the fact that the party’s senior leaders, including Manmohan Singh, are mere regents for the heir apparent. The important thing is that Mukherjee has not been snubbed, unlike Arjun Singh who was put down for saying something similar not too long ago. It looks like the winds for change are blowing through the Congress.