Insofar as the impact of the visit to Chennai of the US Secretary of State, Ms Hillary Clinton, is concerned, I have no hesitation in describing it as somewhere between an anti-climax and a damp squib.

A greater part of the blame for this should be squarely laid at the doors of the State Department spinmasters, on the one hand, and the local organisers at New Delhi and Chennai, on the other.

Both showed themselves to be lacking a grip on the task assigned to them, without deference for the high degree of discernment of the people of the intellectual capital of the most advanced States of the Indian Union.

First, the exact programme to be followed during her visit to the metropolis was kept under wraps until the last moment, with the result that there was total bewilderment among even high-placed government officials, particularly those responsible for security arrangements, as to Ms Clinton's movements within the city.

The Americans seemed unwilling to take the local officials to be every whit as competent and committed to the security of Ms Clinton.

It is because of this tendency of looking upon everyone other than themselves as less knowledgeable and experienced, that they often come to grief when they handle foreign policy issues or are on foreign soil.

Next, the spin masters led Chennai down the primrose path of believing that Ms Clinton was coming to the city to have a feel of the impressive role it is playing as a bustling hub of trade and industry and to signal the paramount importance the US attached to forging a people-to-people, instead of a mere government-to-government, partnership.

Both these vital objectives deserve more than a tremendously rushed sweep of a short meeting with the Chief Minister, a set-piece recycled speech brimming with stale and oft-repeated statements and an hour or so of cultural show.

They needed the stage to be set and the setting to be prepared with imagination combined with a respect for, and an understanding of, the people among whom Ms Clinton was scheduled to spend the day.

Heaven-sent chance

Apparently, the US organisers at both the Washington and Chennai ends, thought that the mere appearance of Ms Clinton was enough to make waves. At least, the Town Hall-type format of mingling with the people, much like the one arranged in Mumbai for the US President, Mr Barack Obama, which he deftly made the most of, would have enabled Ms Clinton to give a push to the idea of building up people-to-people rapport.

What happened actually was that more than 1,200 invitees, representing the cream of the Tamil Nadu society, were kept under some kind of house arrest for three hours and more in the vast, cavernous auditorium of the Anna Centenary Library.

Here was a heaven-sent chance for the US organisers to screen some documentaries on the various aspects of the India-US Strategic Partnership and the current status of the initiatives taken under its auspices. Instead, the audience, comprising opinion leaders and young impressionable minds, was left to fend for itself, just staring at the empty rostrum.

Ms Clinton, who turned up after a delay 45 minutes, went straight to the lectern, read out her speech with a few complimentary allusions to Chennai and Tamil Nadu grafted on to it and walked off the way she came, without so much as a wave of the hand.

In the event, the only solid part of the visit was Ms Clinton's one-hour long tête-à-tête with the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Ms Jayalalitha.

The Chief Minister's grasp of issues of governance and politics and her lucid and professional manner of articulating them are certain to have impressed Ms Clinton as a model of the world-class calibre of State-level leadership that exists in this country.

Ms Clinton's invitation to Ms Jayalalithaa to visit the US gives her a golden opportunity — first of several, let us hope — to put her undoubted talents to use to bring India to the forefront on the world stage.

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