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Mani Shankar Aiyar is a public intellectual with a gift of the gab. A Stephanian, whose father died when he was young, a student​; he did well ​for himself and joined the coveted Indian Foreign Service in 1963, after pursuing a degree in Oxford where he had a brief interaction with Rajiv Gandhi. Twenty-two years later, he joined Rajiv’s prime minister office as a joint secretary and went on to become one of the most powerful bureaucrats. Rajiv undid his monumental mandate, an

Pawan Khera ran Delhi chief minister Sheila Diskhit’s office for more than a decade as the officer on special duty. Many insiders were of the view that he was more influential than the ministers, and most certainly the babus. Pawan was good, he’d make things happen, a doer, an organiser, the troubleshooter, the go-to person, and, must add, fairly intellectual yet down to earth, would help people, irrespective of their political affiliations, so very popular too. All the top e