Judging by the aplomb with which he goes about his ministerial tasks, Mr K.R. Narayanan appears to be at home in the troubled and troublesome world of present-day Indian politics. But a closer examination is bound to show that essentially he remains something of an ‘outsider’, indeed considerably more so than the other two former members of the Indian Foreign Service who too have moved to political pastures. Interestingly, even as a diplomat he was a rather unusual member of the pin-striped tribe. Many considered him to be an academic strayed into the foreign service. And he surely preferred scholarly pursuits to the embassy cocktail circuit.
Sept-Oct 1987, volume 11, No 5