Natwar seeks to gobble up Tytler's patch

NEW DELHI: If he could have his way, external affairs minister K Natwar Singh would gobble up Jagdish Tytler''s fledgling NRI affairs ministry. Within days of the formation of the new ministry, the then foreign secretary Shashank made MEA''s intention clear — he wrote to the cabinet secretary asking for NRI affairs to be made a department within his ministry.
And the position hasn''t changed since then.Insiders say foreign service mandarins can''t quite reconcile themselves to the loss of their patch. NRI affairs used to be a section within the MEA and a new ministry would move its business elsewhere. As it happens, the ministry has not yet transferred the NRI division to Tytler''s ministry.
And the upshot of this for Tytler is that he has been left with no work. In fact, he has been going from pillar to post, seeking to get what belongs to him. At present, he ''works'' out of his residence as his ''office'' is the executive dining room in South Block. In the budget, his ministry was allotted a princely sum of Rs 7 crore.
How did this happen? Was Tytler merely given a ministry to appease him? Or has Natwar Singh and his officers effectively rendered him jobless? According to well-placed sourced, the creation of the ministry was the brainchild of none other than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
It''s said that Singh was very impressed by the Chinese wooing of its overseas residents. It picks up as much as 65% of its foreign direct investment (FDI) from overseas Chinese, while in India the figure is a lowly 10-12%.
The MEA doesn''t seem to have shared this perspective. It''s stand is spelt out in Shashank''s letter of July 5, which was also sent to national security adviser J N Dixit. He wrote: "It will be worthy of examination whether a new department of non-resident Indian affairs could be created as a part of the ministry of external affairs."