Mulford mania

US Ambassador David Mulford may not know this, but he has just overtaken Yoga TV guru, Ramdev, as the CPM8217;s favoured target. Send the man back home to Washington, huff the commissars of the politburo, as they weigh Mulford8217;s every utterance in the scales of political acceptability, sniff each word for a possible neo-liberal conspiracy lurking among its vowels.

Mulford8217;s loquacity occasionally veers on the maladroit and impolitic and this newspaper has had occasion to criticise him for his gauche and ill-timed comments linking the viability of the Indo-US pact with India8217;s stance on the Iran nuclear issue. But that controversy should have been laid to rest when the US government distanced itself from its envoy8217;s stance. What has now caused our comrades to go red-hot under the collar is the ambassador8217;s espousal of FDI in the retail sector, and his assessment that the Left parties have not read the issue right. To construe such an observation as interference in 8220;India8217;s internal matters8221; is to either lend a wholly untenable weightage to the envoy8217;s personal opinions or exhibit a remarkably thin skin. Ambassadors everywhere state what they believe in and attempt to promote their views in various ways. In fact, India has its own lobbyists in Washington working for its interests, and ex-US ambassadors are among those employed by lobbying groups. It is ultimately up to the concerned country, and its government, to decide whether what a plenipotentiary 8212; or indeed a lobbyist 8212; says makes sense, or not.

India has come some way from the dire old days when a 8220;foreign hand8221; lurked at every street corner and New Delhi worried endlessly about attempts of foreign interests to 8220;destabilise8221; the nation. The country has now acquired the status of a confident player capable of acting on 8212; and defending 8212; its interests. India will open itself to the idea of FDI in retail only when its domestic politics allows such an option and not because the US ambassador believes that the country should do so. Come on, Comrades, India may not be a banana republic but neither is it a thought police raj.