Friendship in deep waters

So far it has seemed odds are stacked against the deep sea option. Although New Delhi has now agreed to share the financial costs of the feasibility study with Iran. The study is long overdue. Turned out the ship carrying out the survey sank in 2002.

Meanwhile, the Iranians are tempting energy-hungry India with exploration blocks for oil and gas to ONGC Videsh as well as LNG lines. New Delhi knows though any answers are linked to Pakistan’s attitudes on engaging India. Perhaps by the time External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha goes to Teheran for the Joint Commission meeting in mid-December, things could become clearer.

Home truths from abroad

Despite the broadbanding of India’s foreign and security policy outside the MEA and into other ministries such as Finance, Commerce, Industry, etc, the power to change or make policy continues to rest in the expanded bureaucracy — and the minister on top. Parliamentary committees, apart from periodic briefings on certain subjects, are hardly in the decision-making loop.

But Krishna Bose, the diminutive head of the Standing Committee on the MEA as well as the leader of the Trinamool Party in the Lok Sabha, is hoping to change all that. Aware that committee MPs are not allowed to travel under their own umbrella (travel with the Lok Sabha speaker is different, since he can invite who he likes from whichever party), Bose has written to External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha, asking for the travel ban to be lifted.

As a start, Bose has suggested MPs be allowed to travel in the neighbourhood, to learn first-hand about the tensions and travails that prevail. Some of the enormous expenditure on MPs’ travel within the country — for example to check out passport offices — could be transferred to foreign travel, Bose suggests.

Meanwhile, at a recent Standing Committee meeting on the ICCR, Bose welcomed new suggestions to contemporise India’s cultural explorations, beyond classical music and dance and into philately, modern art and films. Minister of state and movie star Vinod Khanna, for one, is bound to be thrilled. All his attempts to promote Bollywood abroad had so far been stymied by the high-thinking folk in South Block.

Goodbye, Mr Keshavan

Narayan Keshavan’s e-mail is still warm in my inbox. ‘‘Yo! Lou Dobbs is on at a different time in India!’’ He was referring to the popular CNN show that he was on last Thursday evening, vigorously defending the outsourcing of jobs to Indians back home. Keshavan had barely exited from the studio, when he suffered a massive heart attack. He died the next day in hospital, just like that.

Much has been written about Keshavan, how he knew almost everybody in Washington and New York, in politics, in the media. He was head of the Indian-American Forum for Political Education. He knew, closely, many in the NRI community lobbying for influence with the BJP back home.

Many thought he was too smooth. But Keshavan just never gave up. He sat with those fruit juices of his, waiting for you to finish your endless conversations with other people. (Turned out he once had a big drink problem, then decided to de-addict himself.) Then he would introduce you to the many layers beneath the political jungle … We’ll miss you Keshavan, wherever you are, America won’t be the same without you.