Brahmastra ver 2.0

I had brought to you the inside story on how the Indo-US nuclear deal was clinched on that eventful day in Delhi in March 2006. The Brahmastra that we unleashed at a critical point in the negotations proved crucial.

When the NSG waiver was slipping out of our hands in Vienna last week, Indian diplomats did not have access to the same Brahmastra and had to rely on a different one. A quick call was made to Pranob Mukherjee to tell him that the waiver was hanging precariously and that his intervention was necessary to pull it back from the brink.

The official story was that Mr Mukherjee issued a letter promising unilateral moratorium on testing, but I suspect that what really must have made the difference were his phone calls in rapid succession to the heads of the Govts of Austria , New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland, Norway and his long one-to-one conversations with them in his thick Bengali accent. If he had gone on and on in that fashion and refused to disconnect till they signed on the dotted line, what option did the poor guys have than to relent?

If I had been in charge of strategy, I would have kept a back-up plan ready. I would have asked Dr Kalam to standby with his laptop, to be rushed to the capital cities of these countries, by a special aircraft, at short notice, and subject the heads to his 594-slide PowerPoint presentation titled “Vision 2025” and how he felt each of these countries ought to conduct its affairs. A combination of Benglish and Tamglish would have been lethal but luckily Plan A itself did the trick.

On such delicate manoeuvres and subtle diplomatic moves behind the scenes are major deals between countries struck