Gujral Changed The Face Of India'S Foreign Relations

External affairs minister I K Gujral's independent handling of foreign policy can, perhaps, best be summed with a recent anecdotal episode : at the meeting of non-aligned foreign ministers earlier this week, the Bangladeshis were especially worried that low flows at Farakka would see India taking an intransigent stand on water-sharing. They pleaded with Gujral. An immediate crisis was averted when the minister called officials and instructed them to take appropriate measures.

As the political plot thickens in New Delhi, governments in Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Nepal and Bangladesh are desperately worried about the fate of Inder Kumar Gujral. Along with officials and analysts within the country, they say he will bring great maturity to the prime minister's office.

He has had a long-standing association with the Left movement, but if he is made Prime Minister he will not adopt a doctrinaire approach, says Muchkund Dubey, foreign secretary during Gujral's last incarnation as foreign minister in 1990-91. He will support liberalisation in all areas where reforms are overdue, but he will temper it with measures designed to serve social objectives.

The 77-year-old Gujral has survived numerous swings in political fortune in the last 50 years : with a prime minister like H D Deve Gowda who essentially learnt on the job