Pokharan-II, though many of us disagreed with the nuances of how it was executed and followed up, showed boldness unusual for our politicians. But precisely those bumps, the imprudent mention of China in his letter to Clinton and the generally poor post-Pokharan diplomacy have given the pro-changers cold feet. "You didn't ask the MEA and see what a blunder you made," was the message from the mandarins as the Empire struck back. A contrite PMO unfortunately bought it.

The result: we now have a prime minister who knows more about foreign policy than most others and also has the popular image to make a departure from the past now repeating old rhetoric and shying away from a pro-active approach.

Colombo and after, there has been no policy initiative onPakistan. The response to Mandela at Durban and subsequent South Block claims of having extracted an apology from him, the repetition of the old NAM blah-blah, and now an apparent policy paralysis on the Iran-Afghanistan scrap don't exactly indicate a particularly sharp mind at work.

His government's inability to break out of the babus' stranglehold has blighted it in general. But the MEA is Vajpayee's own playground. No one should know better than him that of all the ministries it is the MEA that most needs change.

He has unfortunately been trapped by empty talk of the need to preserve old national consensuses. Continuity in diplomacy is the virtue of lazy minds. If continuity was indeed so important and any thought of change such an outrage, why didn't we too, like Pakistan under Zia and subsequently, agree to have the same foreign minister, our own Sahibzada Yaqub Khan, irrespective of which party was in power?

Or maybe the basics of this Holy National Consensus on foreign policy could be enshrinedin the Constitution so no one would dare to deviate from them. If you are going to treat diplomacy as trench warfare, a game to be played from fixed positions for ever, why maintain such a large foreign policy establishment? Cut it to size. Produce manuals on how each country and region is to be treated. Then carry on as if nothing ever would change in the world.

No policymaking establishment can be perfect. Even the mighty Americans live with strategic absurdities like dividing Asia between their central and Pacific Commands at Radcliffe Line so India comes under the purview of the CINCPAC at Hawaii and Pakistan is the playground of the Centcom in Florida.

But there are few others that are so unchanging. Even the Americans, with increasing interest in proliferation issues and growing business prospects, created a division specially to deal with South Asia just a few years ago. We, on the other hand, continue to group Iran and Afghanistan, both vital to our policy interests, under one division that spendsall its time, and understandably so, on Pakistan.

So why blame anybody if there is a policy paralysis on Iran and Afghanistan? Even on Pakistan, it has been years since a new idea emerged from the MEA. In fact, any thoughts that emerged, first under J.N. Dixit as foreign secretary and then under the now buried Gujral doctrine, were quickly nixed by the same forces of continuity. On the US, if there is a change now and a degree of fleet-footedness, it is mostly because there is a powerful politician laying down policy.

Vajpayee has far too much intellect and experience not to realise that in the business of grand strategy only the ones who dare to differ, with conviction, make a mark. Shattered by his 1962 defeat Nehru made a most reluctant shift towards the West, but his heart was still in his old doctrine, unwilling to accept its failure. So the shift only compounded the disaster.

His metier was non-alignment with a tilt towards the socialist world and his failure his inability to move away from itwhen national interest so demanded. Unfortunately, he will be remembered for both. Mrs Gandhi, on the other hand, made her mark with three remarkable shifts from the Nehruvian doctrine. Interventionism and annexation would have been anathema to her father. She used precisely these methods to dismember Pakistan and annex Sikkim. The third break from the past was Pokharan-I.

Do we, on the other hand, remember her for anything she did in her second innings? Her second reign was actually blemished by her blind support to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as she too fell prey to the forces of continuity ignoring the advice of the odd mandarin who dared to think, and advise her, differently. Brajesh Mishra, who had the good sense to look at things differently then, should remember a thing or two about that.

Similarly nobody remembers Rajiv Gandhi for the old inanities he may have repeated on foreign policy. The India-Sri Lanka accord, though it was executed so disastrously, was the one time he dared to thinkdifferently. At least here was one Indian leader not shy of taking a few risks to assert India's claim to being a regional power. He was failed by our Establishment, including the media, which did not quite have the stomach for such hardball. He paid for it with his life but, in the process, achieved something for India. He destroyed, at least for a long time to come, the LTTE's hopes of finding a foothold in Tamil Nadu and thereby the extreme separatist fringe in our own Dravidian movement.

Narasimha Rao would find a place in the South Block hall of fame not only because he committed such sacrilege as opening out to Israel and South Africa but also for the way he played around with Washington in a most cynical manner in the most desperate of times. His reaching out to Rafsanjani in the immediate aftermath of Babri and Charar-e-Sharif was a diplomatic coup. He could not have done any of this if he too had succumbed to the lure of continuity. Even Gujral, for all his alleged woolly-headedness, left us adoctrine in his own name.

Why, then, does a leader of Vajpayee's intellect and popular strength have to follow old doctrines? Why should he let the babus lead him by the nose? New York, this week, is his chance to unfold a Vajpayee doctrine. Will he read the old script, repeat the old lines on disarmament, cross-border terrorism and Pakistani malevolence, or will he dare to rise above all this, take a wider view of the world and India's role in it? Surely he would wish to be remembered for more than just Pokharan-II?