Internal publicity division

There was a time the external publicity division (XPD) of the ministry of external affairs was mischievously referred to as the “internal publicity division of the external affairs minister”, given the time devoted by the staff to ensuring domestic publicity for the minister in charge, especially in the minister’s home state and local language media. These days XPD has a much wider mandate, but old habits die hard. But it is not the minister that gets as much PR done for himself as the foreign secretary. The XPD staff is busy sending SMSes out to ensure that everyone at home has read and seen the lady. Though it is not known if these messages are sent around the world to get India’s message out where it counts!