The Atal Shuttle

Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has a yen for foreign travel. When he was foreign minister in Morarji Desai’s cabinet, Subramaniam Swamy had dubbed him Shuttle Behari because he claimed he was more often out of the country than in. As prime minister, Vajpayee has not lost his wanderlust.

Vajpayee’s hectic travel schedule for the last three years speaks for itself. In February 1999 he was in Trinidad and Tobago and then in Lahore. In June that year he flew to Dhaka and, in November, to Durban. In 2001, his international stopovers included Mauritius, Italy, Portugal and the USA. Last year he visited Vietnam, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, UK and Japan. Besides a second trip to the US.

A scheduled visit to Australia had to be cancelled twice because of a crisis back home. Cynics wonder whether the PM’s latest trip to Singapore and Cambodia, when Gujarat was still smoldering was really necessary. Or does Vajpayee travel so frequently to get away from the tensions back home?

True megalomania

Narendra Modi's growing megalomania is reflected in his personal website. It is dominated by gushing articles in praise of the new Sardar and justifications for his government.

Predictably, his critics from the English language media have been have been lambasted in no uncertain terms.

Modi’s admirers have been forwarding the following bizarre SMS message: ‘‘in 1942 British quit India movement declared by two Gujaratis; bapu + sardar. in 2002 terrorists quit India movement declared by two gujaratis: narendra modi+ praveen togadia. ur cm is truly chotta sardar. if you are true gujarati please forward to 7 other true gujaratis.’’

Considering that Advani’s followers feel that the home minister is the real inheritor of Sardar Patel’s mantle, it would be interesting to know whether they consider the new rival a threat!

Passport problem

Union Minister for Civil Aviation Shahnawaz Hussain flew to Assam so that he could travel on the inaugural Air India flight from Guwahati to Bangkok.

But when the minister reached Guwahati, where some 185 invitees had assembled, he discovered that his passport had been left behind in Delhi. After frantic SOS messages to the ministry of external affairs and the home ministry for advice, the joint secretary in the ministry Sanat Kaul requested the passport office at Guwahati to issue a temporary diplomatic passport for a week’s validity in the name of the minister.

The passport office at Guwahati was specially opened on Sunday to prepare Hussain’s travel document.

The minister even filed an affidavit promising not to stay in Bangkok beyond a week and, in Delhi, Hussain’s original diplomatic passport was invalidated for the corresponding period.

Interestingly Hussain’s three personal assistants who were accompanying him on the special flight while forgetting their boss’s passport had remembered to put their own travel documents in their luggage.

Each blamed the other for the lapse. The minister even berated senior officials in his ministry, though they could hardly be held responsible for the carelessness of his personal staff!

Wrong hat

Journalists are normally reluctant to attend early morning assignments, but an exception was made when K.C. Pant was leaving for Pakistan to attend the SAARC meet.

The press release from his office implied Pant had something significant to convey to the media and listed the many impressive hats he wore: deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, special envoy on Kashmir and member of the National Security Council.

But the television crews who showed up at 8.30 am at the airport to cover Pant’s departure were taken aback to find that Pant did not open his mouth on Indo- Pak relations, but confined himself to a lecture on poverty alleviation!

First name calling

Members of the sangh parivar are taught to address fellow clan members by their first name with the respectful ‘ji’ added at the end. For example, the home minister is addressed as Lalji and not Advaniji.

But such familiarity is reserved for private conversations. In public people are expected to give due respect to a person’s position and the prime minister is referred to as ‘sir’ or ‘Vajpayeeji’.

But during the PM’s recent trip to Gujarat, chief minister Narendra Modi arrogantly made it a point to address Vajpayee not as ‘sir’, as protocol demanded, but as Atalji. Modi was keen to keep up the pretense that there were no differences between him and the prime minister, but unfortunately for Modi, Vajpayee did not try to hide his animosity, even snubbing him publicly.

Modi is an Advani loyalist, but for the last two years he had worked assiduously to come closer to Vajpayee.

Two summers back he was chided for turning up at the prime minister’s retreat in Manali though all party men had been instructed that it was a private holiday. Last year, when Vajpayee visited Gujarat after the earthquake, Modi landed up uninvited at the Bhuj airforce base and tried to join up with the prime minister’s party from Delhi.

Despite his efforts he could not be included in the helicopters making the aerial surveys since the SPG insisted that his name did not figure in the list of passengers cleared in advance.

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