Harsh V Pant's write-up, 'India's diffidence problem' (May issue), is quite timely and thought provoking. This article should prove an eye-opener for India's foreign policy makers. Unless India asserts itself and speaks from the position of strength nobody will take it seriously. And to assert oneself one needs to realize one's inner strength. In today's fast changing global order, everything is dynamic. We too have to move with the changing times. There is no point in getting stuck in the time warp.

Gone are the cold war days of super powers. In the contemporary scenario, a super power is the one which can command the largest following in an influential group of nations. India too is a power centre in its own right as the writer has rightly pointed out. If it gains the skill to articulate its moves and plays its cards properly and tactically it can rule the world. Simply adopting a servile attitude vis-à-vis shrewd foreign policy players of other countries is not going to take us anywhere. This will rather make matters worse in the long run as it will expose our weaknesses.

While both politicians and bureaucrats are equally responsible for the mess the country's foreign policy is in today, greater share of the blame goes to the politicians who run the business of foreign affairs according to their whims. The recent goof up by Union Environment Minister of India Jairam Ramesh is a case in point. Complementing your host for their achievements is one thing, but downgrading one's own country in a foreign land, no matter what the motivation could be, is another. He criticized the very government of his own country of which he is a part. Apart from making a mess of his official trip to China, he has exposed the country's foreign policy to the scrutiny of a neighbouring country whose intentions have always been suspect.

With such friends around, India needs no enemies.

Vinay Ojha
Delhi

Punjab battle in Southall

It was a fight between Ludhiana and Jalandhar in the Southall Constituency of South London in the British general election last month.

Jassi Khangura, a Congress MLA for Rai Pur, Ludhiana, arrived in Southall to support his nephew, the Tory Candidate Gurcharan Singh for Ealing Southall. The incumbent Labour candidate, Virender Sharma, hails from Jalandhar and his father, Dr. Lekh Raj Sharma, has been closely connected with Congress  in Punjab since Darbara Singh days, served as the Secretary of District Congress Party and appointed a MLC for his services.

An eloquent speaker who was educated in Britain, Khangura, failed to get elected as a Labour Councillor and a Labour MP. So he moved to Punjab where he has considerable influence as he is a close relative of the late Pratap Singh Kairon and got elected as a MLA.

Jassi Khangura sent emails to a number of voters here saying that he is coming not as an MLA but in a private capacity to help his Mamaji (maternal uncle) Gurcharan Singh in his election campaign, confirmed Councillor Jagdish Sharma, MBE, the Labour Leader of Opposition in London Borough of Hounslow. When Khangura arrived to support his nephew, the leading Punjabi Weekly Des Pardes headlined: 'Mame di support waaste bhanja aaaya' (Nephew comes to support his maternal uncle).

Gurcharan failed to become a Labour candidate before the previous elections, so he crossed over to the Conservative Party but lost against Virendra Sharma who won with a majority of 5070 votes in a bye-election in July 2007 after the sudden death of the serving MP Piara Singh Khabra.

The two candidates and their supporters have been visiting Sikh temples; meeting businessmen in Broadway, the high street of Southall; and going door-to-door to garner support.

Gurcharan is originally from Malva and Virender from Doaba in Punjab. So the Southall fight was dubbed as a fight between a Doabi and a Malvi.

Kul Bhushan
London

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