(By M K Shukla & Rakesh Ranjan) It's not for nothing that Indian foreign service (IFS) officers are not held in high esteem by Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers. Most of the time they seem to miss the actual narrative in global affairs, burdened as they are with the baggage of the past where the lynchpin of foreign policy was non-alignment and arrogant moral posturing. The latest stark example of the foreign office missing the writing on the wall was the recent US election which threw up an unpredictable Trump - just like the 2014 national election in India sprang the surprise of unpredictable Naren Modi. The Indian Embassy in Washington is now said to be trying desperately to make contact with Trump's advisers. Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, NSA Ajit Doval and BJP general secretary Ram Madhav have made two trips to the US. India's best conduit to the Trump think-tank is the conservative Indian-American businessman Shalabh (Shalli) Kumar, who formed the Republican Hindu coalition which came up with the phrase "Ab ki baar Trump sarkar" and donated a million dollars to the Trump campaign. At first, Indian diplomats refused to take Kumar's offer of help seriously. But after he organized a meeting for Jaishankar and Indian Ambassador to the US Navtej Sarna with Republican leader Newt Gingrich, they have realized Kumar's value, even if they do not acknowledge it openly in the best of Indian Anglican traditions set by late PM J L Nehru. The Foreign Office is said to be now pulling all the stops to ensure that there is an early Naren-Trump summit to take stock of the east and west Asian situations and raise their bilateral trade to $10 trillion. To achieve this objective, apart from Shalli Kumar, it's also engaging the leading lights of Hindu American Foundation (HAF). For the first time there are four Hindu members of Congress: incumbent Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is joined by first time winners Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Ro Khanna (D-CA), and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) in the House of Representatives, besides Indian American incumbent Ami Bera (D-CA) and the first-ever Indian-American to be elected to the U.S. Senate, Kamala Harris (D-CA). Hindu Americans also made significant strides in state-level races. Just a few of these include incumbents Niraj Antani (R-OH) and Prasad Srinivasan (R-CT), along with Jay Chaudhuri (D-NC) and Ash Kalra (D-CA), who were elected as first-time winners and the first Hindus to serve in their respective state legislatures. Hindu Americans were also elected to many city-level races around the country, too numerous to mention.