US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to India on October 20-22 was significant and unusual in several respects.First: Rubio did not visit Delhi which would have been the usual go to city for a foreign minister while visiting a country on a bilateral visit. Instead, Rubio decided to go to Mumbai and thereafter Jamnagar. Perhaps Rubio felt that as he had visited the Indian capital five months earlier in May he could go to the country’s financial capital on this occasion, especially because his focus was on economic matters.

Second: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar did Rubio the courtesy of going to Mumbai to meet him. This was an extraordinary gesture on Jaishankar’s part and should have been acknowledged as such by the US side. It was therefore unprofessional on the part of US ambassador to India, Sergio Gor, to have used the formulation, as reported in the Indian media, for Gor meetings with Jaishankar in Mumbai. Gor said ““We expect that Minister Dr. Jaishankar will be joining us there along with other individuals here from Delhi who will be making the trip up there to see [Mr. Rubio]”. Gor is not a professional diplomat but that is no excuse for him to have used the word “expect”. That gave an opportunity to some Opposition parties to criticise Jaishankar’s graciousness towards........

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