India is getting ready to spend a whopping Rs 5 crore on the ‘Bharatiya Pravasi Divas’ Non-Resident Indian jamboree, which will be held in New Delhi from January 9. As many as 1,200-1,500 NRIs are expected, mostly paid up members of the overseas chapters of the BJP in North America. But there are also other gentlemen and women in their own right, third-generation immigrants to Mauritius and the West Indies and the Guyanas. With barely three weeks to go, the jury is out on how the event will turn out. Is Bhishma Agnihotri, the NRI ambassador at large, who has been travelling the world first-class over the last year at the expense of the taxpayer, going to hold court? Both the Foreign Office as well a section of the BJP are shuddering at the thought. Since no one wants to create a controversy at the Big Event, Agnihotri could actually find himself sidelined. Afghan Spread With two new consulates up and running in Kandahar and Jalalabad this week, India’s turning out to be the only country that has missions in four Afghan cities. The northern town of Mazar-e-Sharif, the home of the fabled Blue Mosque and the domain of Abdul Rashid Dostum, is also peopled with diplomats from Russia, Turkey and Uzbekistan. Herat, close to the Iran border and traditionally a Shia stronghold under the lordship of Ismail Khan, also has consulates from Iran and Turkmenistan. While Jalalabad and Kandahar, close to the Pakistan border and over the last decade considered by Islamabad to be under its sphere of influence, is now home to missions from both India and Pakistan. Among the more interesting developments on the Afghan front is a meeting early next month between India, Iran and Afghanistan on the development of the Chabahar port, on the Persian Gulf and barely 300 kms from the Afghan border. With India keen on institutionalising trading arrangements—a preferential trading area with Kabul is on the cards—and Pakistan equally determined not to open the land border on both ends, Chabahar could turn out to be the ideal alternative. Iran has promised to develop the port and India has agreed to build a road from the border town of Zaranj to Delaram, which further links up to to the Kandahar highway. The United States, interestingly enough, is said to be quite supportive of all these Indian initiatives. Where Was Rocca? US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca gave India a big miss on her current tour of South Asia—she went to Nepal instead—which has been dominated by her getting-to-know-the-Jamali-Cabinet-in-Pakistan. This is the first time since she was appointed a couple of years ago that Rocca has opted not to come to India, perhaps a sign of the creeping coldness that has begun to enter into parts of the relationship. But since life is made up of the strangest coincidences, her former boss and ranking member of the Senate foreign relations committee Richard Brownback—she was once his staffer—was in New Delhi last week. Increasingly, Iraq, rather than India-Pakistan, seems to be becoming a centrepiece of the conversation between New Delhi and Washington. With Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra just back from the US, the Foreign Office seems to have come to the conclusion that however much it may not like the idea, ‘‘regime change’’ in Baghdad is more likely than ever. With Washington distracted by Iraq, even Rocca must have realised that her eagerness to get India to return to talks with Islamabad would have been somewhat misplaced. Faux Pas, In Russian FICCI’s outgoing chairman Rajendra Lodha embarrassed a roomful of corporates at a lunch thrown in New Delhi in honour of Russian President Vladimir Putin a couple of weeks ago, when he launched into very badly spoken Russian. Lodha broke up the words, twisted them into nonsense syllables and simply wouldn’t stop. Sure, he was just being friendly, but no one, least of all Putin, was amused. Certainly, it did nothing for Indo-Russian relations.
