Indian image diminished
Under Manmohan Singh regime
India must send out well-known public figures as ambassadors to USA/UK/Russia and China!
Not these faceless bureuacrats, often retired and pensioned off anonymous figures
Indian foreign policy? As good as none?
Yes, the way India is getting its image diminished in the foreign capitals can be known only when you travel abroad and give some opportunity to pick up some random conversations!
Let it be with the taxi drivers or your room service and other you run into. We asked a well-informed Filipino taxi driver, well-informed in the sense he is serving a leading Manila Hotel taxi fleet and also he had worked abroad for long years and had come back to live with his family. And he knows what is the world like etc.
I asked: Where is the Indian Embassy? We were driving through the main thoroughfares and almost we were in and out of every major site, be it malls or other foreign embassies or such landmarks like the Magsaysay Foundation etc.
The taxi driver just blinked in absence? Indian Embassy? Never heard of? Not one asked me this questions!
So, this is the same way we found in other South East Asian capitals.
We inside India just seem to be boastful about our own country’s importance in the world today. I had often wondered: The Indian PM doesn’t speak much. Be it Parliament or public forums. Never gives a press conference. Never written a column or a book. We simply didn’t know a thing about what the Indian Prime Minister is like!
So, I often used to wonder: when the PM goes abroad, as he had done more extensively than inside the country what he would talk, what sort of conversations he would make, say with Obama or Mr.Xi or Putin? Or for that matter the self-conscious Brits who always wear a mask over their real self.
Would the Indian Prime Minister open his speech or talk first or would he wait for the counterpart to start the first sentence.
You, readers, can rehearse for yourself to imagine how the top leaders would conduct their diplomacy. So, it is no wonder why Indian foreign policy is in a dump, so to say. Also, why the former foreign minister was so suddenly replaced.
Is the new foreign minister any better?
In fact, it looks that in New Delhi, the nomination of so many names, so many posts, be it Governors or foreign ambassadors or even replacing some ministers or recalling the very same tainted ones to man some new assignments-all these appointments that carry heavy load of responsibilities are people, mostly many of these appointments reek of total non-application of mind and poor, why even erratic judgements.
We can reel a long list of such high profile jobs in the hands f utterly unworthy persons. And, lo and behold, some other very many key and sensitive appointments are simply not made. So many critical posts remain vacant.There is clearly, lately, certain developments and trends that point to a new authoritarian tendency that had built up in Delhi, around the top leadership.
So much carelessness, so much revenge politics, it for tat doings is noticeable and all these developments points toward one thing.
It is a march towards some untoward happening or happenings.
History, even recent history is full of such head-on collision and destruction and decay and total disappearances.
So, we like to take this opportunity to share with our discerning readers that when it comes to foreign policy we have let down the great Indian legacy. Starting from Gandhi to Nehru and from then onwards, we had built up an enviable legacy in our foreign policy.
Our Non-Alignment Movement, in whatever form you formulate, it is still our basic bedrock.
Somehow, lately, we have been derailed, by various forces that we, Indian seem to be stuck with India-Pakistan and India China conflicts.
When it comes to larger issues, say like the current Syrian war issues, India is dumb.
We don’t have any voice. In this dull and dead moment what will India speak when the PM meets Obama? What the Pm will talk, something new with Mr.Xi. Or, with Putin?
Unless you have a debate, you have a public discussion at many levels of the forums, unless the Indian people are sensitised with these world issues, there would be nothing you can say when the time comes. India is not heard in the UN forums for a long time.
You don’t have the ambassadors as Pandit Nehru had the most talented and the most learned and clever public figures, even the career ambassadors like K.P.S.Menon or K.M.Panikkar or even M C Chagla and other. We had such stalwarts like V K K Menon. These are the people who lifted India to the highest forums.
My hero of a diplomat is of course, the late Dag Hamerskold, the Swedish intellectual UN Secretary General, who raised the UN profile to a height that had never after reached. When he came to Oxford in 1961 to receive a hon. degree I stood outside the Radcliff and listened to every word of his. I bought the pamphlet and even now treasure it as a rare piece. When I travelled to the then Soviet Russia in 1961/62, I made it a point to travel to Uppsala, his home town; I went to the cemetery and paid my tributes. There were still fresh flowers on his tomb. The tragedy was still fresh and alive.
I admire the present UN Sec.Gen, Ban-ki-Moon. But he must be active. The US must enable him to perform.
Our articulations and our interventions and our timely vision drove Indian foreign policy. Now, it has become such a dull world, dark and damp even! Please save India’s good name, its hoary past!
Intervene effectively in the Syrian debate. We have much to say on the stance of Obama, Putin and even Mr.Xi and others. The world must have a peaceful way to resolve conflicts. War, military intervention must be the last, inevitable option. The UN, UNSC must be the last forum.
It is a bogus debate, this debate about American exceptionalism, please don’t trap, Obama, the good man into this pointless debate.
Russia has much to do now. So too China. Let them come on the world stage.
After all India is a peace-welcoming country only. But for heaven’s sake, please let India speak, speak out. Don’t make Indians a dumb people.