Its such a long journey from the South American capital of Georgetown to the backward village of Thakurain ka Purwa in the renamed Amethi constituency, but Guyana President Bharat Jagdeo hour-long sojourn in search of his roots on Sunday was not only replete with nostalgia and longing. Once the Hindi movie-like scenes were over, this pardesi showed he had work to do. And so with considerable help from the MEA and the National Informatics Centre, Jagdeo launched a website called ‘‘Trace Your Roots’’ (www.indianroots.nic.in) in the village. On the computer screen he filled out first the details of his ancestor, one Matau, who had fled from poverty in the erstwhile United Provinces to join a ship of indentured labour outbound from Bombay, to the rubber and sugarcane plantations of the British Empire. The idea, Secretary in the MEA Shashank said (``its better than cutting a ribbon’’), was to help the extensive Indian diaspora, especially the descendants of those who had left the country some 100-odd years ago, to connect with those they had left behind. Emigrants who log on will be given a unique identification number by the NIC, to help them keep in touch with the status of their requests which, NIC will in turn pass on to each district magistrate. Initially, the service has been restricted to Uttar Pradesh, although the MEA hopes Bihar will soon follow on. Shashank hopes that by the time the next Pravasi Divas comes around in January, connectivity with Mother India would be much more fulfiled.Missile man takes offThe Prez is finally growing wings, and flying off on his first trans-continental tour in October. Sudan is a highlight of the visit that also probably includes the UAE and Greece (Spain turned down the offer, saying it had had enough visits for the year). Now A.P.J. Abdul Kalam wanted something different, so the MEA in its effort to diversify relationships, decided to work the phones. Khartoum was a first-rate ready reckoner, and not only because of India’s $750 million and growing investment in Sudan’s precious oil reserves. Until 9/11, Sudan was more often than not described as a ‘‘failed state’’ by Washington, although its continued incarceration of terrorists like Hassan al-Turabi, an ideological twin of Osama bin Laden, seems to have helped. Sudan’s statuesque, Nubian community must have been a considerable draw too. Then there was Khartoum’s decision to back India’s observer status claim in the face of opposition during the last Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit. To round it off handsomely, ONGC Videsh’s decision to pick up a Canadian oil concession in Sudan’s oil reserves seems to have paid off ,with 3 million annual tonnes of crude already earmarked from that investment. By the time Kalam visits, additional Cabinet approvals would have brought the Sudan commitment to a whopping 11 million tonnes of crude annually.Khanna does a GujralIn the wake of Attorney General Soli Sorabjee’s indictment of the MEA-Home Ministry nexus for using Pakistani prisoners as ‘‘bargaining chips’’ for Indians in Pakistani jails, here’s another whopper. It is believed that the Home Ministry and parts of the MEA are considerably unhappy about suggestions to ease the passport verification process made by Minister of State in the MEA, Vinod Khanna, a couple of months ago. Khanna drew the bureaucrats particular attention to the often humiliating police verification that is the central pre-condition to getting a passport, pointing out that in a nation like India, the passport more often than not functions as an identification document. Why should the police harass ordinary citizens by asking them all kinds of uncommon questions, Khanna wanted to know?It was enough to rush the blood into the heads of all those attending the inter-ministerial meeting. The upshot is that Khanna, the BJP MP from Gurdaspur, a constituency that borders Pakistan, is being accused of being a ‘‘softie’’ cast in the I.K. Gujral mould. As foreign minister, the latter had increased the passport’s validity to 20 years, although it has since reverted to its original 10-year period. Wonder what will be the outcome of Khanna’s suggestion.
