Lodhi out, who’s in?

Will the new Pakistan High Commissioner to India please stand up? Whatever the truth and whether or not Islamabad’s man in Beijing Riaz...

Will the new Pakistan High Commissioner to India please stand up? Whatever the truth and whether or not Islamabad’s man in Beijing Riaz Mohammed Khan will be the new occupant of Pakistan House in New Delhi, fact is Maleeha Lodhi is well and truly out of the race. The smart and sophisticated Lodhi, who as Pakistan’s recent ambassador to the US was said to be very much at the centre of the triumvirate also consisting of US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Christina Rocca as well as then US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin — incidentally, much to the dismay of India’s ambassador to the US Lalit Mansingh — is believed to have been spiked for the India job by none other than her own Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri. No one quite knows why, although one can happily speculate. Lodhi would have shone so brightly in Delhi, she would have had the capital city eating out of her hand. Perhaps, and that could be dangerous, she would have put all the stars back home in the shade.

Still, few are celebrating Islamabad’s decision not to put their best foot forward into Indian territory as much as the MEA. In fact, the Pakistani Foreign Office and the Indian Foreign Office seem united in their joy of Lodhi having peaked too early (And why not? The genotype of the sub-continental male is older and stronger than the fissures caused by 55 years of separation.). Back in Washington, Mansingh has been seen to be metaphorically clapping louder than most…This diarist remembers when Mansingh, a couple of years ago, refused to be interviewed alongside Lodhi on a Fox News programme. There were few takers for the reason that Mansingh put out as refusal then — that he would not be seen alongside a Pakistani as long as cross-border terrorism did not come to an end.

The Chinese flavour

China hands are clearly in fashion. Shiv Shanker Menon, India’s man in Beijing, is the new High Commissioner to Pakistan, while Harsh Bhasin — named as High Commissioner to Pakistan last year and now going to Copenhagen — is believed to speak as fluent Mandarin as the Chinese next door. Now we also know that Nalin Surie, currently Additional Secretary in MEA’s East Asia desk — of which a key component is China — has been named by New Delhi to succeed Menon in Beijing. Surie was trained in Cantonese, not Mandarin, a measure of the MEA’s diversification policy on its giant neighbour.

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Another appointment that is being closely watched is that of India’s ambassador to Paris Savitri Kunadi. The lady’s done not a few top jobs in the West and is now said to be interested in an extension of her current assignment. Problem is, she turns 60 this year and, according to the rules, cannot be allowed one. Which is why Kunadi’s all set to do a Mansingh on the MEA. That is, retire and get a political appointment as India’s ambassador to France — just as Mansingh got the top honchos in South Block to do for him for the US.

Only for art’s sake?

What’s the deal between PM Vajpayee and the Roerich art school in Naggar, Himachal Pradesh? Each time the PM goes off on vacation to Prini, the tiny hamlet off Manali, he announces a crore of rupees from the GOI fund towards building an art school in Naggar. He did so when he went there last year, he did so again last week. So is last week’s money an additional grant, or did last year’s cash never show up?

Not that the PM’s interest in art has no links at all to his pet passion, politics. Vajpayee knows that Nikolai Roerich, one of the greatest painters of all time, who fled his beloved St. Petersburg after the revolution in 1917, found his way to Naggar and painted some of the most evocative scenes of the Himalayas here. His son, Svetoslav Roerich later married Devika Rani of the Hindi film world and they both lived happily ever after in Bangalore. Now here’s the twist. One section of the Russian intelligentsia is believed to be scandalously lobbying for the exhumation of Svetoslav’s body from his grave outside Bangalore and his re-burial in St. Petersburg. Perhaps Vajpayee wants to avoid any comments on this messy story when he visits Russia’s grandest city in ten days time. And so his dedication to the building of an art school in Naggar.

Thanks but no thanks

British minister for international aid Clare Short finally resigned from Tony Blair’s Cabinet last week, in protest against Blair’s decision to go with the US rather than the UN on Iraq. In one fell swoop, she not only disproved the British media’s rather disparaging description of her as having the ‘‘most flexible bottomline’’ in current British politics — a reference to her threat of resignation in March and then her decision to keep her job — but also indicated the current turmoil within London on its relations with the one and only, somewhat lonely superpower.

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But here’s an irresistible Clare Short nugget to do with India. Seems that she was here about a couple of months ago, to offer aid to projects in Jammu and Kashmir as well as the North-East. Knowing just how prickly the MEA is on suggestions that foreign money could be tied to these states, Short decided she would nevertheless broach the matter with Finance Minister Jaswant Singh. And so she did in a meeting, where Singh sought to again and again dissuade her in his famous baritone. The feisty minister refused to give up and pointed out that India should really take the money for the North-East as lots of other nations were doing for their own underdeveloped regions. At which point, much to the amusement of those in the room, Singh couldn’t resist an admonishment. ‘‘Don’t worry Clare,’’ he said, ‘‘we’ll manage.’’