As the Narendra Modi government marks its hundred days shortly, its glaring shortcoming in foreign policy is an appalling deficiency of intellectual inputs in the making of that policy. Over decades, for better or worse, the edifice of India's foreign policy under successive governments has come to be built around one individual: the seat of that individual has shifted from time to time between the Prime Minister's Office and the ministry of external affairs. In recent years, the PMO has decisively influenced the framing of policy. Rare exceptions to this rule include J.N. Dixit, easily the most powerful of foreign secretaries in recent memory, who also had a vision of India's place and role in the world even in shifting circumstances.

-- KP Nayar's must-read column  on 100 days of the Modi government.