Tricky deal: India's next foreign
minister By Siddharth
Srivastava
NEW DELHI - Who will be India's
new foreign minister? Speculation is rife that
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will reshuffle the
cabinet in the next few weeks. The portfolio has
been vacant since the former incumbent Natwar
Singh, embroiled in a corruption scandal, resigned
last December. Any chances of a quick comeback
have been scuttled by the report of an independent
committee that he misused his post as the chairman
of the Congress party's external-affairs cell, in
the oil-for-food
program in Iraq.
Manmohan himself has hinted that a new
appointment is imminent. Last week at a dinner
hosted for parties supporting his coalition
government, the prime minister was asked who would
represent the country at the United Nations
General Assembly in the third week of September.
He reportedly said, "The new foreign minister."
Manmohan had mentioned on his way back from St
Petersburg after attending the Group of Eight
summit in mid-July that there would be a foreign
minister soon.
The new appointment is
tricky (which has caused the delay so far) as
Manmohan is closely associated with the Indo-US
nuclear deal as well as the peace process with
Pakistan, and would like to have a say in matters.
At the same time, Manmohan would prefer to have
somebody who could oversee the nitty-gritty
details in an efficient manner (after all, as
prime minister, he has other responsibilities),
keeping the broad picture in mind. Manmohan had a
difficult time with Natwar, an old Congress hand,
Gandhi family loyalist and foreign-affairs
specialist.
Though Natwar did try to look
at things Manmohan's way, whenever pushed he
betrayed the old-world Cold War syndrome of
looking at nations as capitalist/socialist and
aligned/non-aligned blocs. That also meant an
aversion toward Washington. Manmohan already has
his hands full with Human Resources Minister Arjun
Singh, a Congress old-timer, who has been
positioning himself as a champion of the backward
castes and making out-of-turn declarations on
reservations (quotas) in educational institutions
that have angered upper-caste students in northern
India.
Thus Manmohan is not likely to
favor a foreign minister who is going to shoot his
mouth off or have a mind of his own on the issues
that have been closely chaperoned by the prime
minister personally. So far, Manmohan has been
assisted by two relatively junior ministers of
state, Anand Sharma and E Ahamed, who have been
echoing his stout defense of the nuclear pact as
well as the benefits of engaging with the United
States.
In this context, Manmohan is
unlikely to favor a political heavyweight, which
in the current dispensation also translates to
proximity to Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
While Sonia has backed Manmohan on the nuclear
pact, she is reportedly unhappy with the effect of
India's budding relationship with the US on
domestic Muslim voters. Sources say she is also
keen that a new foreign minister be appointed as
Manmohan leading the government's charge on the
nuclear pact puts other achievements and issues
out of focus. While she does not want Indo-US
relations diluted in any way, she is reportedly
keen to move it away from public glare, which
would not be possible if Manmohan took on the
additional charge of handling external affairs.
Sonia would prefer decisions to be
balanced out with perhaps a stronger voice against
Israel as well as other matters relating to Iraq
and Iran. She is also not too keen to allow the
anti-terrorism steps by the government to take on
a racial hue with Muslims being harassed in the
country.
Given these checks and balances,
several names are making the rounds as candidates
for foreign minister. There is Home Minister
Shivraj Patil, increasingly criticized for his
handling of internal security, which is now being
more or less managed by Manmohan's trusted aide M
K Narayanan, who is the national security adviser.
Shivraj is a staunch Sonia loyalist, but reports
suggest he is unlikely to be cleared by Manmohan,
who is looking for the right mix of efficiency,
experience and continuity.
Defense
Minister Pranab Mukherjee continues to be the
front-runner as a minister who is good at his job
as well as having managed his relationship with
both Sonia and Manmohan quite well. Though he was
a possible candidate to become prime minister when
Sonia declined the post, Mukherjee has quietly
settled in as the No 2 in the government, unlike
Arjun, who reportedly still rues his missed
chance.
At present, Mukherjee is the
leader of the Lok Sabha (lower house of
parliament), as Manmohan is a member of the upper
house elected via an electoral college and not
through direct elections. Mukherjee is the most
experienced of all ministers and was external
affairs minister under prime minister P V
Narasimha Rao in the early 1990s.
One more
name to do the rounds is S M Krishna, the
incumbent Maharashtra governor and the former
chief minister of Karnataka, who had aggressively
pushed the state as an information-technology and
knowledge powerhouse but lost the election. Since
then he has been biding his time in Maharashtra,
looking to make a comeback. Krishna fits the bill
quite nicely, enjoying the confidence of both
Manmohan and Sonia.
Science and Technology
Minister Kapil Sibal and Finance Minister P
Chidambaram are outside contenders, though their
chances appear to be dim for the moment.
Meanwhile, Manmohan zealously pursues the
nuclear deal, work that he would probably like to
delegate to the new foreign minister in the near
future. On Saturday, Manmohan met with Atomic
Energy Commission members led by its chairman and
secretary, Anil Kakodkar, and had a 90-minute
meeting with scientists previously associated with
the nuclear program.
Manmohan has been
keen to enlist the support of eminent atomic
scientists and has agreed to their suggestion to
involve them in the process of negotiating
safeguards to protect India's independent
nuclear-weapons program.
This month
Manmohan made a fervent pitch for the Indo-US
nuclear deal, while at the same time pledging that
India's sovereignty would be guarded. While the
nuances of the nuclear deal will continue to be
debated, most important, Manmohan made it clear
that India stands for strong relations with the US
and there is no need for India to be "apologetic"
about it.
He is perhaps the first Indian
prime minister to have spoken in such a forthright
manner about the necessity and importance of
building bridges with the United States and to
move away from all the anti-colonial rhetoric.
Under attack from the opposition Bharatiya
Janata Party, leftist coalition partners and a
section of the scientific community, an
emotionally charged Manmohan argued his position
on the deal for more than an hour in parliament.
At the end of it, the left agreed with his pointed
rebuttals to their fears, and the scientists
welcomed his assurances, while an isolated BJP
also grudgingly accepted most of his defense of
the deal.
Siddharth Srivastava
is a New Delhi-based journalist.
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