Few rollbacks for Yashwant with Brajesh in the wings

But beyond, in the recesses of the Prime Minister’s Office at the other end of South Block, Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra carried on much like before, exchanging his nicotine gum for real cigarettes, preparing to meet yet another foreign visitor, British Defence secretary Geoffrey Hoon, in his office on Thursday morning.

With Jaswant Singh having shifted the ground from beneath India’s feet, every day, for the last three-and-a-half years—from Pokharan to Pakistan, post-September 11—normal nations would be forgiven for fearing a vacuum, or at least a go-slow, on their most active beat.

This Ministry of External Affairs could, however, be credited with throwing out old, outdated mantras that clung to the dustbin of Cold War history, and in its stead, fashioning new trends that had the potential of creating a new dynamic in the region.

So, the unasked question on everybody’s lips, today, will Yashwant Sinha fit into the shoes of Jaswant Singh?

To be sure, Singh, a foreign policy and security wonk even in the Opposition, had the temerity of overhauling India’s foreign policy and remodelling it to suit New Delhi’s new concerns. But as he made way for Sinha from across the road, Singh also left his colleague with just enough of the foreign policy story to put his own stamp on it. Pakistan. The US. China.

There’s more than enough on the platter for Sinha to dig his teeth into. India’s relations with the US have in recent years undergone a tectonic shift, but the contours of its strategy with Pakistan must wait before it can reach a nail-biting finish.

Still, India and China are well on their way to resolving one of the bitterest issues left over from history, that of coordinating lacunae on the Line of Actual Control, which may in turn even lead to the resolution of the boundary issue.

Sinha’s reputation in the Finance ministry seems to have had the effect of putting the MEA on its guard. He’s an old bureaucrat, said one diplomat, so he knows his way around.

One diplomat pointed out that in his capacity as the co-chair of the Indo-Russian joint commission, Sinha oversaw the waxing and waning of Indo-Russian relations over the last few years, just as New Delhi warmed into a brand new honeymoon with Washington.

Still, Sibal’s appointment as Foreign Secretary on such a day seems to have had the effect of reassuring the diplomatic community. Whereas outgoing foreign secretary Chokila Iyer sometimes seemed afraid of hurting a fly, leaving Singh to often directly deal with his joint secretaries, Sibal is reputed to be well aware of the value of the cut and thrust of high diplomacy.

‘‘He knows his way around,’’ said one western diplomat, having worked both in Europe (Paris, twice) as well as Washington (he was deputy chief of mission in the early 1990s).

At a time when the world was changing and New Delhi’s reputation abroad was plunging like a yo-yo in the aftermath of the destruction of the Babri masjid, Sibal ‘‘held on to the terra firma of India’s foreign policy,’’ said one diplomat.

Meanwhile, the unchanging nature of Brajesh Mishra’s position, as the presiding deity of foreign policy in the PMO, will necessarily stabilise the uncertainty of the situation, a foreign policy observer said.

Pointing out that Mishra, even when Singh was around, was the pointperson for ‘‘strategic dialogues’’ with Russia, the UK and France, even as he regularly coordinated with his American counterpart, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, spoke volumes of the situation, he added.

Under the newer circumstances, Mishra’s role could become clearer. The fact that he accompanies the Prime Minister on all his trips abroad, meets every major visitor to India—from Richard Armitage to King Gyanendra— and participates in most meetings of the CCS, ‘‘gives weightage to the continuity factor… Mishra remains clued into the heartbeat of India’s security and foreign policy,’’ the observer pointed out.

And so it goes. The more things change in the MEA, the more they remain the same.