India loses out yet again - This time in the UN leadership race

Though the Indian nominee Shashi Tharoor was a late entrant to the UN leadership battle he did put up a gallant fight before losing to the South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki Moon whose final election is now a formality. Shashi was considered close the existing incumbent Kofi Annan who was not really a friend of US and in the ultimate analysis the five UN permanent members including US finally decided to cast their vote for the South Korean which was what mattered at the end. So all the talk of India becoming close to US as well as a possible inclusion as a permanent security council member were laid to rest at least for the time being with this result and it's yet another political fiasco for the world's largest Democracy and the UPA Government. In this process we alienated even small neighbors like Afghanistan and Sri Lanka who put up their own nominees even though with little bit of diplomacy we would have got the entire South Asian bloc supporting our candidature

Interestingly Shashi's website has lot of interesting articles and his views on Hinduism and religious tolerance definitely is worth reading

RK