Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor lighting the lamp to celebrate Diwali at Indian Consulate on October 18, Mr. and Mrs.Prabhu
Dayal Consulate General of India, singer Anoop Jalota can be seen in pic.

It was a homecoming of sorts for Shashi Tharoor, India’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, who visited the United Nations headquarters in New York last month and was given a warm welcome by many, including UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon. And during his weeklong sojourn here, the Indian American community accorded him rousing welcome, fondly remembering his close association with the fast growing Non-Resident Indian (NRI) community here.

Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor with
the female members of the Indian community.

Tharoor, who spent over two decades working for the world body, described that he was “struck” by the welcome from everyone, right from the security guards to the secretary general. Three years back Tharoor and Ban were competing for the top UN post after Kofi Annan’s retirement. While Ban prevailed, Tharoor gradually went on to become a lawmaker in India, as a member of the ruling Congress party.

On his first official visit to New York, the minister addressed the United Nations General Assembly, leading Think Tanks and the Indian Diaspora on a range of foreign policy issues from China to Liberia. The newly appointed Indian Minister of State for External Affairs and a member of the Indian Parliament from the Thiruvananthapuram constituency in Kerala, Shashi Tharoor delivered his statement on the commemoration of the 15th anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development at the 64th United Nations General Assembly in New York on October 12.

Noting that developing countries had been most affected by the global economic crisis, India has urged rich nations to honour their pledges and keep up the stimulus and other efforts to spur their economies. On its part ‘India remains firmly committed to realising the vision set out in Cairo 15 years ago and to fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015,’ Shashi Tharoor, told the UN General Assembly. “In these difficult times when the world is still grappling with the adverse effects of an unprecedented global economic and financial crisis, developing countries, where the crisis did not originate have been the most affected,” he said.

Tharoor regretted that globally ‘we are still far from realising the goal of universal primary education, infant and child mortality and maternal mortality rates continue to remain high and access to universal reproductive health is still distant in many parts of the world.” Expressing his firm belief that ‘these goals are still achievable,’ he said, ‘Resolute political will and concerted global action are needed to realise these goals.’ ‘The benchmarks set by the ICPD Conference continue to highlight the onerous task ahead for all of us.’

At a Dinner/Reception organized under the leadership of George Abraham, World Malayalee Council, in his honor on Long Island, New York, members of the Indian community sought his help while seeking to protect their properties and investments back home. NRIs here appealed to Shashi Tharoor to sponsor a new Bill that will safeguard their interest. Supporters of the proposal voiced their grievances on how their properties were allegedly taken over by government, mafia and illegal occupants. Dr. Tharoor expressed his inability to sponsor the proposal as the matter was not under the jurisdiction of his Ministry. Dr. Tharoor told the members of the community that he would take up the matter with the authorities concerned in India. They pointed out that the 25-million strong Indian diaspora contributed $52 billion as remittances annually. On the proposal to grant voting rights to NRIs, Dr. Tharoor said a Bill to this effect may not get support back home.

Being an NRI for a long time and returning to India in 2007, Tharoor said that this is a good time to represent India since India has been drawing greater attention all over the world because of its extraordinary economic growth in the last several years. Tharoor said that he has been quite excited about his new assignment as Minister of State for External Affairs. At the reception, instead of a speech, he took up a large number of questions from the audience.

Other highlights of his visit to New York included his appearance on The Colbert Report in New York, where he said that President Barack Obama truly deserved the Nobel Prize as he has given a lot of people hope around the world and has helped in improving the image of the US. “He has given us hope. They’ve given it to a person who has said that the America of today has its roots in the India of Gandhi and that’s the kind of sentiment we like,” he said. On the Colbert Report, he easily stood his ground in the face of Stephen Colbert’s aggressive style of interviewing and expressed a strong opinion in favour of Obama getting the Nobel peace prize.

He was interviewed by Fareed Zakaria, editor of the international edition of Newsweek and a current affairs program on CNN. When Zakaria questioned him about the 400,000 stationed on the Indo- Pak border, he bluntly stated, “Pakistan has nothing that India seeks. We actually believe fundamentally at the strategic level that a peaceful, stable and prosperous Pakistan is in our interest.”

During the course of his stay here, Tharoor met with Dr Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon and correspondent for CNN at a studio in New York. Dr Gupta, who was considered for the prestigious position of the surgeon general of the United States in the Barack Obama administration had withdrawn his name from consideration to spend more time with his family and to continue practicing neurosurgery.

During an interview with the ethnic media, he said, India has no role in insurgency in Pakistan’s Balochistan province and unlike ‘certain other countries’ it does not follow the policy of destabilizing its neighbors. Negating Pakistan’s recent accusations about India’s support to separatists in Balochistan, Tharoor said, “There is a great difference to the Indian approach to neighborhood policy and the approach of certain other countries which have been instrumental in the past in sending terrorists to Indian soil,” Tharoor said in New York. India is prepared to walk the “extra mile” to normalize relations with Pakistan if it takes action against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks and dismantles terrorism infrastructure, Shashi Tharoor said. While interacting with the media, Dr. Tharoor spoke of lessons learnt as a political beginner in India. In classic style, Tharoor summed up his unfortunate adventurisms with, “The success of a jester lies not in the tongue of teller but the ear of the hearer.”

Dr. Tharoor’s UN career began in 1978, when he joined the staff of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva and included key responsibilities in peace-keeping after the Cold War and as a senior adviser to the Secretary-General, as well as the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. Dr Tharoor left the UN on 31 March 2007.

Dr Tharoor is also the award-winning author of eleven books, as well as hundreds of articles, op-eds and book reviews in a wide range of publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek, The Times of India and The Hindu. He has served for two years as a Contributing Editor and occasional columnist for Newsweek International.

Dr Tharoor is an internationally known speaker on India’s recent transformation and future prospects, globalisation, freedom of the press, human rights, literacy, Indian culture, and India’s present and potential influence in world politics.

Born in London in 1956, Dr Tharoor was educated in India and the United States, completing a PhD in 1978 at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he received the Robert B. Stewart Prize for Best Student. At Fletcher, Shashi Tharoor helped found and was the first Editor of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs, a journal now in its 33rd year. Dr Tharoor was also awarded an honorary D.Litt. by the University of Puget Sound. A compelling and effective speaker, he is fluent in English and French.

Dr Tharoor has been appointed an International Adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva for the period 2008-2011.

[BY AJAY GHOSH]