S Jaishankar has been able to hit ground running, says Tharoor

Congressman S Jaishankar, a Thiruvananthapuram Shashi Tharoor praised External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, saying he is a'specialist' and has been able to hit the ground running. The election of Jaishankar is an extremely interesting decision that the Prime Minister took, Tharoor said while speaking to Network 18. In May 2019, Jaishankar, who served as foreign secretary from 2015 to 2018, was made foreign minister when Prime Minister Narendra Modi returned for the second consecutive term.

Tharoor said that the foreign ministry requires a specialist, not just a politician, but rather a specialist who has come recently from that service, and knows everything inside out. As a result, what you have seen is a situation where the foreign minister has been able to hit the ground running in a way that a purely political minister wouldn't have done, he said.

The Congress leader said that the decision to appoint a bureaucrat in a political role has raised a lot of eyebrows but it seems to me that it is a hallmark of Modi's style. He said that there are many others in government like Hardeep Singh Puri and RK Singh who are ex-bureaucrats.

For example, Hardeep Puri. He was not a minister in a ministry he worked in. He is a foreign ministry guy who is working in urban development. The former Home Secretary RK Singh is handling power, Tharoor said. He says he has seen them as efficient technocrats, and he says that bureaucrats now manage this portfolio and you know how government works. There is a logic to this, and perhaps other governments could learn from that. Tharoor said that his views might reflect his own biases, as he always preferred the presidential system over the prime ministerial one. The American presidential system allows you to appoint the most talented people to the portfolios of your Cabinet without worrying about the electability - you worry about their ability, not their electability. In the parliamentary system, if you are not elected, you can't be a minister. Skills to get elected may not be the skills you need to be a good minister. What Modi does is that he absolves people like my friend Jaishankar from the need to get elected, and he says you do your job well and I will take care of putting me in one of the Houses of Parliament. The former minister said that it was an unusual departure.

The Centre and Jaishankar were attacked recently by former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi for handling the border standoff with China. Gandhi said that Jaishankar does not understand the threat of China.