With the announcement of the Lok Sabha election schedule, Indian diplomacy is on auto-pilot. The only exception may be India’s immediate neighbourhood, if at all. The Election Commission’s announcement last week only confirmed what has been an unstated fact for some time. Politicians who are in ministerial offices, even those only in Parliament, do not want to travel abroad when their primary concern is getting re-elected.

In Washington, there has been a procession of arriving foreign ministers, defence ministers, prime ministers and presidents calling on the new American president, Barack Obama, or his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, or anyone else who will hold the levers of power in America for the next four years. Some of those who have been unable or unwilling to come to Washington are being visited by Obama himself or the heavyweights in his administration.

India has singularly abstained from this exercise of long-term strategic importance, its politicians insularly caught up in the fight for their political future. New Delhi’s ambassador to the United States of America, Ronen Sen, has been holding the fort, somewhat like the brave boy who “stood on the burning deck” in the 1798 Battle of the Nile, an incident that was subsequently immortalized in verse by the British poet, Felicia Dorothea Hemans, in “Casabianca”. But Sen is leaving his post in a few weeks. Despite his demonstrated ability to deliver on promises and provide substance to the bilateral relationship, Washington is used to viewing someone who is about to leave office as a lame duck, be it their own president or a departing envoy.

The inability of Indian ministers to put their imprimatur on the efforts by New Delhi’s diplomats in Washington to ensure a continuation of the Indo-US strategic engagement under the Obama administration has left a huge vacuum. The foreign secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon, filled that vacuum in part when he came to Washington this week; but he filled it only partly and insufficiently in the present Washington environment where politics, not bureaucracy, is of essence.

Into this void has stepped Shashi Tharoor, until recently an international civil servant with one of the highest profiles, who was India’s candidate for the job of the United Nations secretary general in 2006. Tharoor is being aided in this effort by men like Henry Kissinger, the dean of practitioners of diplomacy in our time, and Frank Wisner, a former US ambassador to India. Last week, when Tharoor and Kissinger appeared together in Washington at one of the most prestigious platforms on the global stage, the expectation was that much of the discussion would be on Iran, North Korea, Palestine, energy or nuclear proliferation, which are acknowledged across the board as issues of concern today. This columnist was frankly surprised at the amount of time that was devoted to India — not just by Kissinger and Tharoor in answer to questions from the audience, but also by Michael Howard, the eminent military historian who is one of the founders of the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, and by John Chipman, the director-general of the IISS.

The occasion was a gala dinner that concluded the year-long golden jubilee celebrations of the founding of the IISS. The institute is probably the most prestigious authority on political-military conflict, and is credited with having created many of the intellectual edifices for managing the Cold War. Its golden jubilee celebrations began in London early last year at a similar dinner, which was addressed by Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister who served as his country’s prime minister in the 1990s, but is best known as the “High Representative” for Bosnia and Herzegovina immediately after the Dayton Agreement which brought peace to this troubled part of the Balkans following the disintegration of Yugoslavia.

Kissinger has had a long association with the IISS. In 1976, he delivered the institute’s first Alastair Buchan Memorial Lecture that was established in memory of the first director of the IISS. It is tempting for an Indian to think that Tharoor was asked to be on what amounted to a global stage for the concluding jubilee celebrations of one of the most influential organizations in the world on strategic thought as an acknowledgement and recognition for India. But the IISS does not believe in quotas, and nationality has no role in its proceedings.

Tharoor was a speaker at the annual meeting of the institute in Vienna 15 years ago, and he was picked to be on the stage with Kissinger and Howard at the concluding jubilee event in recognition of his continuing role as a promoter of UN values and as someone with a broad experience in issues ranging from refugee relief and peacekeeping to public information.

The IISS invitation for Tharoor came when a growing gap in engaging the US beyond civil servants was beginning to tell on the mood of camaraderie that the previous US president, George W. Bush, and members of his cabinet such as the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and treasury secretary, Henry Paulson, had liberally unleashed on the US. Fortuitously for India, immediately before the IISS dinner in Washington and afterwards, Tharoor has been on a whirlwind speaking tour, literally from coast to coast in the US, which is giving a shot in the arm for the profile of India and of Indo-US relations in the post-Bush era. In all the years that this columnist has lived in the US, no Indian minister, indeed no Indian in government barring the prime minister, has had such a crowded schedule as Tharoor, promoting India in the last fortnight.

He began his tour in New York as the keynote speaker at the Holocaust Museum during an evening of “solidarity” between the US, India and Israel in the context of the terrorist attack on Mumbai’s Chabad House in November. Previous keynote speakers at such evenings in support of Israel’s oldest social welfare organization — Colel Chabad —have included the poet laureate. Elie Weisel, and the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

At San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, where the UN Charter was signed in 1945, the former UN under-secretary general spoke on the theme, “India Rising: The Soft Power of an Ancient Land in the 21st Century”. In Denver, there was the sixth annual UN seminar, where there were the inevitable questions for Tharoor — as the keynote speaker— about restructuring the UN security council with India on board while at Yale he delivered the annual Coca-Cola World Fund Lecture.

At New York’s Network 20/20, an “organization that helps prepare next generation leaders in the US to participate meaningfully in the promotion of entrepreneurial diplomacy and global security”, the topic given to Tharoor was “The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone: Reflections on India, The Emerging 21st Century Power”. He concluded his tour of the US last weekend at the Florida Literary Festival, where Tharoor and Salman Rushdie shared the stage. This columnist asked Tharoor if he was charging a fee for these speeches since he is now a professional speaker in demand around the world. His reply was that all these appearances constituted a labour of love with no payments involved, no brief from the Indian government and he emphasized that he was not working for any government.

A number of non-governmental organizations with an interest in India are helping unofficial efforts like Tharoor’s to sustain the momentum of Indo-US engagement even as India goes into election mode. The Asia Society has brought out a task force report on advancing US relations with India. Also last week, the former US ambassador to India, Frank Wisner — who played a major role on the American corporate front in the boardroom efforts in the US since 2005 to push through the nuclear deal — became a professional promoter of India in Washington.

Wisner has left the American International Group or AIG, the ailing insurance giant, which has become an albatross around the necks of Obama and his treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner. For many years after leaving Roosevelt House in New Delhi, Wisner was vice chairman for international operations at AIG. He has joined Patton Boggs LLP, India’s lobbying firm in Washington. Wisner follows in the footsteps of another US ambassador in New Delhi, Robert Blackwill, who has left India’s former lobbying firm, Barbour, Griffith and Rogers to join the Rand Corporation.