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| First briefing papers for Pranab Mukherjee | | The man to fill some very large shoes | | NEW DELHI:
With Pranab Mukherje's shrewd ability to dissemble while unhesitatingly locking horns with his opponents, India may have finally found in the diminutive but feisty lawyer-teacher-journalist, the the man to fill some very large shoes. Unlike his predecessor Natwar Singh who was a bureaucrat in his first avatar, Mukherjee, with a healthy disregard for "the men who look for precedents" looks at every issue with the jaundiced eye of a politician.
To Pranab Mukherjee, 70, seasoned political juggler with an eye for detail, moving from Defence Ministry to the circus ring of Foreign Affairs Ministry may be a logical trajectory but any mis-step will be an instant and extremely public trial by fire. No second chances as India's engagement with its immediate neighbourhood and beyond undergoes rapid transformation. The first briefing papers that arrived in his new office at the stone-clad building in Lutyens Delhi were not just on Pakistan, a subject that the self-styled successor to Indira Gandhi is acutely familiar with. Or, the United States. These are the countries including China that make up the triad in India's foreign policy.
Instead, it was also Sri Lanka where peace talks have begun with the Tamil minorities with whom India shares ethnic linkages as the island's internecine wars gets bloodier; and Bangladesh, where progressive electoral paralysis is a certainty; and Nepal, where the deal that Mukherjee personally signed off with the Maoists is threatening to unravel; and Afghanistan, reaching tipping point as India's billion-dollar developmental assistance and diplomatic outmanouevre of Islamabad grinds to the dust in the face of a gritty, and suspected Pakistan-inspired Taliban onslaught.
Mukherjee has left incoming Defence Minister, the simplistic AK Antony with the job of tackling the insidious presence of alleged ISI moles in the Indian armed forces while overseeing grand acquisitions that seek to neutralise and end, once and for all, the nuclear parity in the India-Pakistan equation. In fact the inter-linkages between the two ministries will make Mukherjee's transition far easier. The nuclear deal with the United States in which he has already had a huge role to play is much, much more than just a simple quest for civilian energy.
It has remained the centre-piece of Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh's foreign policy for the last 18 months, simply because it impinges at so many strategic levels on India's putative emergence as a regional superpower. Apart from the unabashed pursuit of allying with the unpopular US, Mukherjee has to parley his government's disquiet over its neighbourhood of "failing" states to win Washington's backing in safeguarding his nation from the inevitable fall-out, by giving India an imprimatur for its own South Asian policy.
Only days ahead of crucial Congressional polls, Mukherjee has first set to work on persuading Washington to hold another lame duck session of Congress if the November 13-18 sitting cannot take up the Indo-US nuclear deal. Manmohan Singh's brief to Mukherjee is that meeting India's energy needs, long-term, are central to creating the strong base needed for economic growth. But on a tactical level, ensuring an uninterrupted and internationally verifiable supply of nuclear fuel that the scientific establishment needs will help create the hitherto elusive minimum nuclear deterrent that translates into India's crucial second strike capability.
As Defence Minister, Mukherjee's unalloyed defence of his country's spotless nuclear proliferation record in the face of repeated attempts by Islamabad to tarnish that image and derail the deal, must be seen in that context. As Foreign Minister, Mukherjee will now have to carry the ball on Pakistan, flesh out India's anti-terror mechanism, the new experimental line in Delhi on its recalcitrant neighbour the problem as the solution.
Manmohan Singh's National Security Adviser, MK Narayanan, has so far been the principal conscientious objector in public on granting concessions to Pakistan. But natural, given Delhi's alarm at the growing reach of Pakistan based terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Jamaat- ul- Dawa and Al Badr mujahideen well beyond disputed Kashmir, post 9/11. Equally, the current kerfuffle over whether evidence against Pakistan in the Mumbai bomb blasts was "clinching", "conclusive" or "not clinching enough" will end as Indian foreign policy begins to be enunciated by one voice.
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