Miliband-ying those Words Around

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It's the script of some terribly slapstick British sit-com on India- with vignettes on cows, rural "squirmy" medicine, traditional India-Pakistani rivalry, and, of course cricket.

What makes it slightly less than funny- is this is Britain's own Foreign Secretary David Miliband's account of his India tour.

His blog on the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office's website is a must-read; containing topic heads like: "Empowerment" , "Micro-Blog" "Squirm (sic: ref to the witnessing of a cataract operation in Amethi)", Sunny Gavaskar or Kapil Dev? oh and yes "Anguish of Mumbai"..... Just in case you missed the main reason Miliband made the trek out to India, met with the Prime Minister and senior members of our cabinet, and was an honoured guest at events at the Taj and Oberoi in Mumbai.

Of course, Miliband made it clear he wasn't here to sympathise with India's demand that those responsible for the Mumbai attacks should be handed over to India. No, very firmly NO. Guantanamo may exist for the U.S. post 9-11 only to extradite terror suspects to, and Britain gets its London 7/7 bombing suspects shipped over as well, but remember, says Miliband, India has no extradition treaty with Pakistan, so, as he told CNN-IBN this week the Mumbai attack suspects "must be prosecuted in Pakistan".

That would make both legal and common sense, Mr F.S. and thank you for reminding us. May we also take you back to July 2007, when the UK expelled Russian diplomats after Moscow's refusal to extradite KGB officer Andrei Lugovoi, wanted for poisoning another former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in the UK. Miliband was at the forefront of demanding sanctions against Russia, even though legally, the Russian government held it was entitled to refuse under the1957 European Convention on Extradition. Or similiar British demands for the Lockerbie bombing suspects from Libya, a country it has no extradition treaty with. Inconvenient memory, I guess.

The British Foreign Secretary also crowned his plain speaking by expounding on the link between the Mumbai attacks and the insurgency in Kashmir- his remarks earning him a rap on his knuckles from a prickly South Block. Perhaps his comments were not as ill-timed, as they were out of synch with the times- failing to recognize that the success of elections in Jammu and Kashmir this New year's eve has changed the paradigm in the valley somewhat. Not to mention the obvious insensitivity of attempting to find any justification for the Mumbai attacks.

But to return to his remarkable passage to India, (in tandem, it seems with Rahul Gandhi's discovery of India), Miliband launched himself with great gusto into the rural landscape. "800m Indians live on less than 2 dollars a day, 450m on less than 1 dollar," his blog reads, "Today I will get a chance to see some of the gap that exists between metropolitan middle class India and the rest."

The rest of that journey was said in the pictures, David and Rahul, young and dashing, Prime Minister-hopefuls mucking about with the cows, or as a national daily put it enjoying "a boys night out in a dalit basti." In the UK newspapers grumbled about the Foreign secretary's sojourn with the Congress scion being an impolitic thing for him to do during election year here.

But there was no hold back on the Blog: as he describes women he met in Amethi, "These were the poorest of the poor, but came from all castes, 5 out of 40 had mobile phones, and none could conceive of Britain - even Delhi was a long stretch."

Also his Cataract op entry titled "squirm", "The operation projected onto a TV screen was a stomach-turner, but the change in people's lives was real." Sounded remarkably like a Borat in reverse describing his home sport of Haraczak (Boratic sport where Kazakhis are allowed to throw potatoes at Gypsies.)

Eventually the potatoes got thrown at the poor British Foreign Secretary, who left India in a blaze of bad press, and must have, unlike many of his cabinet colleagues who preceeded him, been positively thrilled to touch down in Islamabad.

Well, Cheerio and Pip-pip Mr. Miliband, and as we say here, welcome again soon to Incredible India!