Election season is a time when every issue, no matter how long buried, is suddenly exhumed for public scrutiny. Enter stage right, the Khobragade saga. Just when you thought this episode had quietly exited, it returns, now with an encore performance thanks to Devyani Khobragade’s recent promotion to the Indian ambassador to Cambodia.
This promotion, which those in the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), including experienced babus don’t consider worthy, is seen as a bit of a righting of a wrong. For those who’ve forgotten, Ms Khobragade, a 1999-batch IFS officer, became the reluctant star of a diplomatic drama back in 2013 — one that brought India-US relations to a frosty low. Accusations of underpaying her domestic help in the US led to her arrest and a media frenzy.
She cried foul, the US courts eventually nodded in agreement due to diplomatic immunity, and India sent her back home in a rare show of bureaucratic bravado, leaving the Americans with a diplomatic hangover. Now just as we’re in the throes of a general election, Ms Khobragade’s name pops up again. This time, it is in connection with a glitzy photoshoot in traditional Cambodian attire for the country’s New Year celebrations, a sight that lit up social media like Diwali fireworks.
Seasoned diplomats are treating her Cambodian posting with the kind of enthusiasm you’d expect for a cup of tepid tea — acknowledging it more as a token gesture than a triumph. But nothing like a general election to spring a .
