'Excitement' for Hillary Clinton in India

Hillary Clinton is in Calcutta, India, where she told an audience that "she want[s] to see a female US president during her lifetime -- but insisted she was ready to 'get off the high wire' of top-level politics." Interestingly, the Calcutta Telegraph places Clinton on its front page, with the headline, "Hillary's excitement," and then goes on to report that the secretary state wanted to meet with two people while in India--but both have stood her up.

"Clinton had two wishes when she planned her farewell visit to India tagged on her trip to China followed by a day’s stay in Bangladesh, according to sources close to her who spoke on background in order to freely discuss how her trip came about," says the Telegraph.

One was to meet Bengal governor M.K. Narayanan, whom the Americans consider resourceful enough and count on to untie any Gordian knots if they inadvertently complicate relations between Washington and New Delhi. ...

But Narayanan left before Clinton’s arrival in Calcutta on previously arranged speaking engagements at Stanford University and a few other similar venues in the US.

And Clinton's other wish "was to personally thank finance minister Pranab Mukherjee for his long friendship and for his contribution to Indo-US relations in a quarter century if not more." But no meeting between the two has taken place.

Mukherjee left for Manila on Thursday to take over the chair of the board of governors of the Asian Development Bank for a year.

He coincidentally arrived in Dhaka last evening for the concluding ceremonies of the Rabindranath Tagore sesquicentennial celebrations while Clinton was still in the city and will return to New Delhi late tonight, but till the time of writing, scheduling conflicts have prevented any attempts to arrange a meeting between the secretary of state and the finance minister.

Considering the lack of interest by these two individuals with whom Clinton wanted to meet, it's a bit odd (or perhaps it's simply ironic) that "excitement" is the word used to describe her visit.