SM Krishna, a foreign minister whose record speaks louder than his gaffes | Political pulse news

However, he started his innings with a bumpy ride. After I wrote about his three-month stay in a five-star hotel amid Congress’s austerity measures, he, along with the then MoS (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) Shashi Tharoor, was publicly asked to vacate the hotel by his predecessor and then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee.

Krishna was an old-school politician who held no grudges and never brought it up in the years I covered his office and the ministry. Over the years I would meet him to tell stories and we would end up talking about books. I would notice that he was always reading the latest books on geopolitics.

His officials and colleagues in the Foreign Office praised him for his calm and composed style as he navigated the foreign policy bureaucracy in active consultation with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. At 77, he was one of the oldest members of the cabinet at the time – as Indian Foreign Minister he made 83 trips abroad until he ended his career at the age of 80.

As his age caught up with him, He made a faux pas that many would later remember him for. At a United Nations meeting in 2011, Krishna read out the Portuguese foreign minister’s speech for more than three minutes before Hardeep Singh Puri, the current petroleum minister and then India’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, interrupted him.

Dialogue with Pakistan

In the years following the November 26 attacks in Mumbai, Krishna took on the challenging task of working with Pakistan.

After a false start in India-Pakistan relations – following a dispute with the then Pakistani foreign minister – the foreign minister worked with the Prime Minister’s Office to restart the dialogue process between the two sides.

The foreign ministers of both countries then met on the sidelines of SAARC in Thimphu, Bhutan, and decided to begin dialogue on all outstanding issues. Krishna fully followed Prime Minister Singh’s order and developed a close relationship with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. He traveled to Pakistan in September 2012 and met Shahbaz Sharif in Lahore outside the top leadership in Islamabad.

However, he was criticized for not defending Interior Minister GK Pillai in Islamabad at a joint press conference with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi when Pillai was equated with Lashkar-e-Toiba co-founder Hafiz Saeed.

In 2010, as New Delhi intensified its campaign for non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council, Krishna manned the phones, speaking and meeting foreign ministers and interlocutors from more than 100 countries. In the end, India won the non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council with 187 out of 192 votes.

Krishna engaged and met as many as 89 dignitaries in 2010-11. The highlight was the visit of the leaders of all P-5 countries to India in 2010: US President Barack Obama, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron . It was a rare achievement and an echo of the India-US nuclear deal and its impact on India’s global standing.

Relationship with Hillary Clinton and Hina Rabbani Khar

Krishna got along quite well with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with whom he co-chaired three rounds of India-US strategic dialogue. He was also in constant contact with US officials and was instrumental in persuading Washington to grant access to David Coleman Headley, a 26/11 terror suspect who is still in the US.

Krishna also developed a close relationship with his Iranian counterpart Manouchehr Mottaki and was able to see that India-Iran relations were not affected by India’s stance on Tehran’s nuclear program.

When Krishna finished, he mentioned Hina Rabbani Khar twice and spoke fondly about his relationship with her. “I had a good understanding with Hina Rabbani Khar and (Chinese Foreign Minister) Yang Jiechi,” Krishna said, also mentioning his personal disputes with Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio de Aguiar Patriota and South African Maite Nkoana-Mashabane.

In 2011, as the Arab Spring swept West Asia and North Africa, Egypt and then Libya, the MEA, under his leadership and in coordination with other ministries, assisted Indians in leaving these two countries. The evacuation operation in Libya was said to be the largest after Kuwait in 1991 as 16,000 Indian nationals were brought back home in special flights.

As foreign minister, Krishna looked after the consular affairs of distressed Indians abroad and sometimes made it his business to do so, often overlooking facts in his zeal. His loud rhetoric on the incidents of violence against students in Australia – some of which were racist, others were isolated incidents – called into question India-Australia relations at the time. Krishna also took on the case of an Indian couple in Norway for custody of their child, but it turned out to be a marital dispute.

As someone who needed input during meetings and even when answering questions in Parliament, Krishna left a poor impression as a cabinet minister holding the portfolio of foreign minister.

He once misunderstood a question about a Pakistani citizen lodged in an Indian prison and replied that he would discuss the matter with the Pakistani government to secure the prisoner’s release. The stunned Rajya Sabha had to remind him that the person concerned was in an Indian prison.

A success and a dignified exit

But despite his faux pas, Krishna managed one thing, leveraging his IT expertise from his time in Bengaluru: implementing the Passport Seva project, which reduced the bureaucratic burden of issuing passports and reduced the number of documents and time required. He outsourced it to the Tatas. The pilot started in Bengaluru and was expanded across the country. This has been a success story that successive foreign ministers and governments have built on.

When Krishna was asked to resign in October 2012, he did so with dignity. At that time, at his Thyagaraja Road residence, Krishna said that “senior citizens should make way” in ministerial positions that suit the country’s young demographic profile. When I asked him if he would recommend an age limit for Union Cabinet ministers, Krishna laughed and said, “I can talk about myself, not others.”