Under External Affairs Minister Sri SM Krishna India’s foreign policy exertions have finally touched rock bottom. Let us look at the some of the things Sri Krishna has been doing since he took charge:

1. He read a speech meant for the Portuguese Foreign Minister for several minutes without realizing it.
2. He got confused about a Pakistani inmate lodged in Ajmer jail and gave the answer to a question in parliament by taking him for an Indian inmate of Pakistan jail. He thought that Pakistan should consider ‘Dr Mohammed Khalil Chishty’s release on humanitarian grounds’ when Dr Chishty is in Ajmer Jail. Krishna apparently confused Dr Chishty with Sarabjit Singh who is on death row in a Pakistani jail.   
3. On a visit to Australia to get the country to sell Uranium to us, he had no answer to the charge that Australian companies had not been paid for their work in the Commonwealth games.
4. On an important visit to Pakistan, that country’s Foreign Ministry officials complained that Krishna was on the telephone to New Delhi every three or four minutes because he wasn’t sure about the stand he needed to take on a pressing issue and needed instructions.  

All these may make Sri SM Krishna an ideal candidate for being named the Mr Bean of the cabinet but he outdid himself recently by being ‘pro-active’. The External Affairs Minister has undoubtedly a huge range of duties but it is apparent that the most important ones pertain to negotiating with other governments, building bridges and defining India’s position in international relationships. Unlike the other ministries, the duties of this ministry should justly be directed outward.

While one not quite sure of what Sri Krishna has been doing ‘outwardly’, what one can be certain about are his efforts in assuaging the worries of the affluent/ middle class in India – like those whose children are studying abroad. This is perhaps why the safety of Indian students in Australia gets more attention from him than the supply of Uranium. This is perhaps why when some obscure Russian court in Siberia decides to ban the Bhagwad Gita, Sri Krishna takes it upon himself to protest on behalf of those whose religious sentiments have been hurt. Sri Krishna’s latest doing was to ‘get tough’ with the US when Shah Rukh Khan was detained for two hours in an American airport before proceeding to Yale University to be honored (and to dance). Our former President Sri Abdul Kalam was similarly detained but the Government of India did not worry about it too much. Why, then, did the External Affairs get so tough with the US in the matter of SRK?  Is SRK a national icon of some sort? He has not described himself as any such thing and has only projected himself as a businessman in entertainment. This is not to denigrate SRK - who has conducted himself admirably in public - but can the Government of India bestir itself on behalf of private citizens without opening itself out to open or secret ridicule?  In the present instance, members of the Ambani family were apparently on the flight with SRK and duly escorting him to Yale but are they any more than private citizens?

While the Government of India has certainly lost the respect of a large section of the public under Dr Manmohan Singh and become the butt of jokes, it should do its utmost to regain some of this respect. One way might be to treat all private citizens equally instead of treating Bollywood or cricket players as special categories. They may be highly influential in Government circles but admitting their influence so openly will hardly make citizens more patriotic. And India should also try to regain the respect of the rest of the world through acts of some importance – which would only be possible under a more able External Affairs Minister. If we have come a long way from Bandung, Sri SM Krishna is apparently leading the way.