Violating UN diplomatic practice, where major powers and especially nuclear weapon powers do not bid for the top bureaucratic slot in the world body, the PMO had allowed itself to be persuaded that India should back Shashi Tharoor’s candidature. The result unsurprisingly has been the first diplomatic misstep by the Manmohan Singh government. So while analysing Tharoor’s withdrawal from the UN race it is necessary to observe that despite a wary foreign office, some PMO strategists got Dr Singh to personally lobby with other leaders in multilateral forums for “India’s candidate”. The political writing on the UN security council wall had been clear for some time: once South Korea’s nominee got China, Russia and France on his side, the US, UK and Japan had little choice but to back Ban. Opposing him would have pushed Seoul further away from Washington and into Beijing’s arms. Ban’s success underlines

Beijing’s new clout at the UN.

One way to get something out of this avoidable faux pas would be for Dr Singh, who has proved to be quite a diplomatic paradigm shifter, to ask some tough questions on India’s UN strategy. It may sound undiplomatic but is true nonetheless that over the decades, bureaucrats in search of global sinecures, pensioners with high self-esteem and ideologues of a particular persuasion have cohered into a multilateralist quasi-lobby group that has sometimes exercised a surprising amount of influence on New Delhi’s UN diplomacy. For many in the so-called establishment, multilateralism has become an end in itself, disconnected from government’s priorities or realpolitik exigencies. The Tharoor candidature enthused those who ask the question what India can do for multilateralism. The more important question is what multilateralism can do for India.