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Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 09, 2005

National

National

Like father, like daughter

By Our Special Correspondent

Chitra Narayanan

NEW DELHI, JAN. 8. Like father, like daughter. Wearing his pre-retirement hat of an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer, the former President of India, K.R. Narayanan, served as Ambassador to Turkey from 1973-75. Thirty years later, his daughter, Chitra Narayanan, is all set to take over as envoy to Turkey in the next few days.

Interestingly, Ms. Narayanan joined the IFS the same year her father retired from the service as Ambassador to China. After completing her term as Ambassador to Sweden, Ms. Narayanan is in the Capital for a few days before taking off for Turkey.

"I will be occupying the same house that my father occupied 30 years ago," a visibly pleased Ms. Narayanan said about her next assignment, which she described as challenging and interesting.

"Turkey is on the cusp of a new relationship with Europe," she pointed out. Referring to her assignment in Sweden, she said that unlike the rest of Europe, Sweden was less aware of India's industrial strengths.

Major challenge

"So, it was a major challenge to be able to project India as a major Asian industrial powerhouse," the 1978 batch IFS officer said, adding that visits of businesspersons from India during her tenure did much to address this issue.

Ms. Narayanan, who has worked as Counsellor at the embassy in Washington and in different capacities in the Ministry of External Affairs, said that her first love was journalism — her first job, in fact, was at the Press Institute in New Delhi.

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