Outside in

Whenever the prime minister travels overseas on official business, he is accompanied by a phalanx of senior bureaucrats and officials to keep him advised and updated on various policy issues. Most of these are the usual suspects like the finance secretary or foreign secretary, national security advisor and principal secretary in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and so on. But Manmohan Singh's entourage to the G20 summit in Los Cabos, Mexico and the climate summit in Rio has an unusual suspect as well: former Principal Secretary T K A Nair. It is an open secret that Nair was replaced by Pulok Chatterjee as principal secretary in the PMO for lack of performance. And though he retains a post as advisor to the prime minister, his presence on this long trip has raised some eyebrows.