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What are our MPs up to? Questions start being asked

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National Heraldpublisher-detail-arrow
31st May, 2025 09:16 IST

Is it too early to assess the impact of the seven delegations of MPs on a world tour to convey India’s beef with Pakistan? The delegations by all accounts are having more impact at home and much less impact abroad.

The Members of Parliament of course have been dutifully parroting their brief of telling mostly the Indian diaspora that this is new India which will never bow down to Pakistan. As evidence, listen to Bansuri Swaraj address an audience in Hindi in Sierra Leone—the audience invisible in the clip.

The MPs, to be truthful, seem to have rehearsed their part well, making even Nishikant Dubey sound like a statesman; even as Indian newspapers and TV channels keep reporting on the ‘global yatra’ or the ‘tour de farce’ as a commentator put it, it is becoming painfully clear though that the rest of the world does not quite understand the existential threat to India from a smaller, impoverished, divided and militarily weak neighbour, which has also been the victim of terrorists.

Judging by visual evidence shared with the country so far, commentators note, the MPs are being received on foreign shores by Indian officials from the local embassy and an ANI cameraman; they garland statues of Mahatma Gandhi if there is one—and there are in most capitals—visit the embassy for a briefing and a meeting with the Indian diaspora.

A hurried sightseeing trip is thrown in and the MPs have deliberations with 10 or more officials from the country they are visiting. In Rome, they meet Italy’s under-secretary for foreign affairs.

In Panama, Shashi Tharoor takes a walk and appreciates the architecture of the buildings before the MPs are driven to see the Panama Canal in the news because President Trump wants to take it back. Then it is time to take the next flight for the next destination.

“The one thing I’ve noticed about the various clips being shown of the Indian parliamentary delegations’ outreach on the latest India-Pak skirmish is that the audience being addressed is almost never shown”, noted former Major General BS Dhanoa, adding: “Is this deliberate or am I reading too much into it?”

In a testy blogpost, Krishna Prasad, former editor-in-chief of Outlook magazine, reflected on the MPs’ somewhat frustrating foreign trip so far. “At the end of it, there is a boilerplate press release. If you are lucky, like Supriya Sule’s team, you get a page two story in Qatar. If you are not, like Jay Panda’s, you are on page 13 in Bahrain without even a passing mention of Pakistan.

Sometimes, it can just be a photo story to liven up a page a la Tharoor”. He concluded the post by asking if the MEA has been asked to reply to the right questions. He listed 15 questions. As a sample, here are five of them:

1. How many heads of countries---presidents, prime ministers, kings, emirs, etc---have given the delegations their time and attention?

2. How many top news media editors, journalists and columnists of non-Indian origin have the MPs got to meet in person in these countries to seek to convince them of India's case?

3. Has the leading newspaper in any of the 33 countries carried a one-on-one interview with the head of any of the seven MPs' teams?

4. On how many TV news channels have one or more members of the delegations appear on primetime discussions?

5. Which are the thinktanks that the MPs met in each of these countries? How were they identified? Were only those which have historically enjoyed MEA hospitality invited?

What can be said with near-certainty is that the last question asked in the post will never be answered. How much did the junket cost the Indian taxpayers?

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