Pecking order peregrinations

Apart from the External Affairs Ministry, the one other ministry that gets the most invitations from governments across the world is the Commerce Ministry. It is after all an increasingly globalised economic order. However, a lot of the invitations that land on Commerce Minister Kamal Nath8217;s desk remain unheeded or are delegated to his junior ministers, Jairam Ramesh and Ashwani Kumar. A current invitation from Tanzania, for instance, has no taker and the officials are trying to get Ramesh to go. But the Minister of State is non-committal. Incidentally, apart from visits to SAARC nations, Ramesh has only gone abroad once in his ministerial capacity8212;to Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan. This is probably his way of rebuffing hand-me-down invites. Nath, officials point out, has his own favourite places: Geneva, New York, London and Johannesburg. Invites from places other than these, he simply passes around.