Thant restored calm to a stricken UN after the untimely death of Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold in a plane crash during a peace mission to the Congo, a tragedy seized upon by Moscow to promote its designs to change the Organization's administrative system to its own advantage. Hammarskjold, formerly a high official of Sweden, set the UN gold standard. Shashi Tharoor's admirers--of whom there's a growing number--believe their man is cast in the Hammarskjold mold, an intellectual with a strong element of spirituality, a liberal thinker with a strong humanitarian streak.

Tharoor, who was born in London but raised in India and received a Ph.D from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the US at the early age of 22, now is 46 years old and already an under secretary general. But he is uncomfortable with the growing corridor talk at the UN of some day succeeding the man he openly calls his guru, Kofi Annan. Tharoor is savvy enough to know, however, that his discomfort notwithstanding there is bound to be continuing speculation about his prospects.

There may be no sharper mind than his in the entire UN system. The late US Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance once called Tharoor "brilliant." So did David Owen, the former British Foreign Secretary. Kofi Annan long ago recognized his talents, naming him for important peacekeeping duties during the Balkans conflict and now to head up the department of communications and public information, which had fallen into disrepute under lacklustre leadership.

Annan, who is from Ghana and the first secretary general from below the Sahara, is widely admired for his political and diplomatic skills, which the Nobel selectors recognized last year when he and the Organization were named to share the Peace Prize. But his most fervent admirers would not call him a second Hammarskjold--who, by the way, also won the Prize, but posthumously.

Like his boss, Tharoor began his UN career as a young man in Geneva and made a reputation during 18-hour days in peacekeeping operations. "Every shell that landed in Bosnia had to be reported to somebody, and I was the one whom our Situation Center would call," Tharoor remembered during a 1999 interview with Harry Kreisler, director of the Conversations with History project at the University of California at Berkeley. In that same interview, Tharoor said: "One of the things that really turned me completely against any notion of government service was when an Indian student--and I believe this was in Chicago--who had spoken out with anguish against the [Indira Gandhi] emergency back in India, applied to renew his passport and the government refused. I thought, I cannot imagine in the India I've known and grown up in and cherished and valued that such a thing could even be possible...I ended up working for the United Nations instead of my own government."

How did he get into PR, first as director of communications for Annan and now as the head of a $70 million a year substantive department with a staff of more than 700 people? "I got off the peacekeeping course [because] my role in peacekeeping had already been diminished during my time in the Secretary General's office," Tharoor said in an interview with Earthtimes, recalling his spell as Annan's executive assistant. "I came here [to DPI] at his request--initially to hold the fort. It was announced as an interim appointment and intended to be a very short 'interim.' The Secretary General was considering other candidates from a part of the world I did not hail from." (A search was reported to be on for a highly qualified Latin American media professional, preferably a woman.)

With his customary modesty,Tharoor continued, "I seemed to have done rather better than was expected and the Secretary General suddenly found himself asking the question, why look for anyone else? Neither he nor I had planned for this when I first came down"--to his 10th floor administrative office from Annan's 38th floor executive suite.

"I am enjoying it immensely," he said. "It poses different sorts of challenges. This is a richly satisfying part of my UN experience. Here the different thing is not merely information and communications, but for me, as head of it, the challenge of managing a department of this size...I never had the opportunity to lead a team of 700-plus people. I spent the bulk of my career getting the best out of myself; now I am in a job where I have to get the best out of other people and manage to lead them as well as motivate them."

Tharoor sees in his duties a link between diplomacy and administration, emphasized by his office's accountability to 191 member states organized in innumerable committees and with widely varying opinions about the role of public information and communication in the UN. "After 24 years, one has the opportunity to do things one has never done before," he added.

Even before his confirmation, June 1, as under secretary general for a three-year term, Tharoor's vigorous leadership had begun to turn the department around during the interim appointment. There were voices raised in rare approval from some of the noisiest former critics. Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has garnered his share of controversy as the Bush administration's hawkish Secretary of Defense, has observed, "If you are not being criticized, you may not be doing much." But some of the attacks on DPI, often linked to member states' incessant calls for deep UN reform, were as unfair as they were excessive, the department's defenders as well as many unbiased observers say.

Richard C. Holbrooke, President Bill Clinton's ambassador to the UN, was a leader in the onslaught on DPI, which he held in such low esteem that much of his final press conference before his return to private life comprised a series of intemperate attacks on a department he termed a "swollen mess." (In an ironic development, Holbrooke was recently named chairman of the Asia Society, the venerable New York institution where Tharoor is often an honored guest. Tharoor has also moderated panel discussions at the Asia Society. Any time that Holbrooke walks into the institution's headquarters on Park Avenue, he will see Tharoor's books nicely displayed in the bookstore.)

Over the years, every UN department and agency has been subjected to administrative tinkering, not excluding the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, which has had its share of failures among the successes, notably the debacle in Rwanda that cost 800,000 innocent lives because warnings went unheeded in New York. The mechanisms of communications and public information have been subjected to an abnormal amount of fine tuning intended to stem a change in attitude from virtually universal enchantment with the Organization in its early years to a prolonged period of skepticism about UN goals and the cost of attaining them--if they were to be attained at all.

Aside from government representatives, media correspondents covering the UN also have been among the most bitter critics of DPI--in a real sense, biting the hand that feeds. The UN charges no rent for office space and supplies at little or no cost other facilities that enormously ease the journalist's tasks. Yet, in an otherwise flattering article on Tharoor in the New York Times last year, Lynda Richardson called DPI "largely useless and terribly slow." Tharoor then had only recently succeeded a Japanese department head of questionable competence, and reforms in preparation were not yet in place.

Recalling Ambassador Holbrooke's departing diatribe, Tharoor said in the Earthtimes interview that the department he heads then "was unfairly seen as an example of what was wrong with the UN itself."

"It was a grossly overstated charge," he said. "Some things were wrong with it that were not its fault. There was a plethora of mandates given to it by the General Assembly that ranged widely and wildly across the agenda." Member states also tried their hand at micromanagement, he complained, noting that in one instance a resolution was passed to employ a journalist specially to broadcast in a particular language on UN Radio.

"When I asked for the Department's mandates, I was given 38 pages of extracts from General Assembly resolutions," he went on. "What I thought immediately was that these people needed an organizing principle, a vision. I felt that we had to stop doing things merely because we were mandated to do them. But it was important to take the General Assembly along with us. This is after all an intergovernmental organization; you have to persuade governments."

For some in the bureaucracy, this is sheer heresy. But is it working out?

"I think that the only way to get results is to try to make the member states work with you," Tharoor said. "It is happening. I have made some changes on my own, strengthening the Web site for example. We are making other changes within the Secretary General's authority. From November 1, there will be a new headquarters structure." [His department will have three main sections: strategic communications; news and media; and outreach.]

As for that $70 million budget: "Not enough for us to do what the member states want us to do. There is a growing gap between English and the other languages on the Web site and the General Assembly has proposed full parity."

That old bleat from the critics, namely the so called bloated bureaucracy: "We are not particularly overstaffed. The entire Web site was made up from existing posts; we asked for no new posts. The site received 1.2 billion visits last year and I am confident we will be up to 2 billion this year. There was an enormous boost after 9/11. We have a special page on terrorism."

Writing in his regular column in India's national newspaper, The Hindu, soon after 9/11, Tharoor said: "The 21st Century began with the demolition of the World Trade Center this month...The plane, the cell phone, the computer, are the symbols of our time. These very forces, which in a more benign moment might have been seen as helping drive the world toward progress and prosperity, are the forces used by the terrorists in their macabre dance of death and destruction...This was a 21st Century crime, and it has defined the dangers and the potential of our time as nothing else can."

The media typically focus on major developments in the Security Council, but the UN doesn't quite fetch adequate coverage of what Tharoor calls its "less dramatic work." He says: "I'd simply like the media to give UN issues the attention they deserve. We too often get the impression that 'If it bleeds, it leads," but our less dramatic work doesn't make it. Setbacks and controversies are widely covered, but successes are not; instead of 'No news is good news," as far as the UN is concerned we now have to say 'Good news is no news'!"

But there are occasions when UN activities generates considerable ink. The recent World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, for example, drew the sort of media attention that pleases Tharoor.

"I'm less 'down' on coverage of sustainable development after Johannesburg than I used to be," he says. "The Summit was the largest and most complex conference held by the United Nations, and it drew an unprecedented number of journalists and media personnel, from every continent. DPI sought both to raise global awareness about the Summit, and the wider issue of sustainable development. As you know, the phrase 'sustainable development' is one that makes most journalists' eyes glaze over, but I am pleased to say that Johannesburg placed these two words on the covers and the front pages of some of the world's leading publications. The extraordinary volume of media coverage--the vast majority positive--of the Summit, suggests a change for the better."

Many of the thousands of journalists at the Johannesburg summit lauded Tharoor's DPI for its diligence in handling media logistics. There seemed little doubt that if the UN's media staff were extra efficient, they were taking their cue from their new boss. Tharoor monitors staff performance closely because he knows how it influences public perceptions of the UN as an institution.

That isn't just good management. Tharoor genuinely cares about how the UN works in sustainable development, and how effective it is at the grass roots. He's studied the devastating impact of poverty in dozens of third world countries that he's visited. And he wants the more privileged nations--and wealthy sectors of society--to better understand the condition of the less fortunate.

In an interview with World Screen News in October 2002, Tharoor said: "No one in any part of the world is immune from problems anywhere else. We really are on one ship in which those traveling in first class simply cannot afford to ignore a leak in steerage. The people with television screens in first class on that ship need to put some of their cameras in the steerage, because if they don't know what's going on the entire ship could sink with them."

The UN's string of information centers in member states' capitals have long been a drain on DPI finances, causing Tharoor to experiment with a new, regional hub concept. "We have 77 centers now, all under-resourced," he said. "Our people [center directors] do not have the wherewithal to do the job. In Australia, for example, the travel budget is hardly sufficient [for Juan-Carlos Brandt, the director] to visit Adelaide three times a year; yet he has New Zealand and the South Pacific in his mandate."

Paris or Brussels will likely be home to the first of the regional centers, although the UN Information Services in Geneva and Vienna will continue. London might seem an ideal site. However, the British authorities have declined to follow the widespread pattern elsewhere of supplying free office accommodations, despite a direct appeal to Prime Minister Tony Blair. The London center costs the UN $477,000 per biennium in rent, Tharoor revealed. Germany provides free accommodations in Bonn, but if the UNIC is retained he would like to move the center to Berlin, the new capital of the Federal Republic.

Notwithstanding what Lynda Richardson of the New York Times reported, UN correspondents would be appalled if Tharoor were tempted to cut back on media services. There is no such plan, he emphasized, adding, "To use a military term I learned in peace-keeping, the media are our force multipliers."

Press releases, including summaries of meetings prepared for the use of correspondents: "These are indispensable tools for delegations. Summary records come out weeks after an event and the smaller missions rely on press releases to report to their capitals."

Are the media spoonfed by DPI's services, Tharoor was asked. "I would not say that," he said. "The press keeps the UN on the agenda and holds us accountable for what we do. But we are not fully utilizing our potential in television. We are, however, having success in radio. We are doing 15 minutes of live radio news in seven languages. These broadcasts have become immensely popular. In Nigeria, for example, we are told that this is the most listened-to news program and we have a potential audience of 265 million in China."

In Manhattan, Time-Warner has assigned Channel 78 to the UN for round-the-clock programming that includes live coverage of the Security Council and major meetings of the General Assembly as well as daily briefings by Fred Eckhard, an American who has long served as the Secretary General's spokesman. But the cable company scrambles the signal outside midtown, Tharoor said. The City of New York authorities' "Crosswalks" channel and CUNY, the City University cable outlet, have begun, at his request, to carry UN programming, including "World Chronicle" interviews with senior officials and others involved in global issues. [Editor's disclosure: Earthtimes reporters are sometimes invited on the show, which is moderated by the author of this article. Panelists--usually journalists familiar with foreign affairs and the UN--are offered an honorarium but the the show is not influenced by the UN.]

Reporters and editors appreciate Tharoor's assistance. He makes it a point to return his calls promptly--a sharp contrast to many of his UN colleagues. Journalists also value Tharoor's willingness to offer candid perspectives on what goes on at the UN. In his Berkeley interview, for example, he said of the Security Council: "Security Council resolutions are classic examples of drafting by committee where each phrase usually has 15 hands in it and ultimately the lowest common denominator is arrived at, rather than the most euphonious or the most explicit sort of phrase. In diplomatic language, you learn to read between the lines; you learn to read behind the words; you try to think of what has been left out and why...There is always code. There's a wonderful expression: 'frank and cordial talks,' which means 'disagreed completely.'"

UN resolutions always have been overwhelmingly unfavorable to Israel in its disputes with the Arab nations and the Palestinians, but Osama bin Laden has called the world body a "source of evil." To combat that perception, "we face important challenges in a difficult period," Tharoor said. "We need to strengthen our capacity in the Middle East, perhaps by redeploying resources from Western Europe."

He observed that the lack of a network of Arabic speaking professionals was a handicap that he had discussed with the UN representatives of 22 states of the Arab League. Informing the "Arab street" about the UN was not incompatible with US objectives in the universal fight against terrorism, he said. "We all believe we have to engage the person in the street everywhere."

Asked about an American change of heart since Holbrooke's time, Tharoor said, "The US seems to understand that a serious effort is being made and they have encouraged us in that direction. With all of the member states, we are very receptive to constructive criticism. We are sometimes wrong and we keep on organizing ourselves differently.

"But for real change in an organization like the UN you have to give us time. [Secretariat] posts are held by human beings with contracts; offices have leases. You can't just snap your fingers and save money.

"The Secretary General has given me three years to make a difference. While I am always prepared to be judged by my work in progress, I would like to be judged by the finished book. I think we have made a beginning."

It's been an encouraging beginning. While some implacable right wing critics predictably keep up their verbal assaults on the UN, there is general agreement that the UN's work is being appreciated more and more by the mainstream media and public officials across the US and other countries, particularly donor states--even if some of them balk at paying their dues, let alone paying more to keep up with the UN's growing activities. No UN official has better connections with high-level media executives as well as working journalists.

Like his boss, Kofi Annan, Tharoor indisputably has both star power and personal celebrity. Like Annan, Tharoor has an emollient style; he is known to seek out those holding opposing views to discuss issues at dispute. "The careful application of charm," is how one Washington based journalist admiringly characterized Annan's style; he could have been saying that of Tharoor as well. Within the UN bureaucracy, Tharoor is known to be a skilled infighter. He is also seen as accessible; his subordinates say that he's a demanding but considerate boss.

Those perceptions generate jealousy among some colleagues who privately cavil over what they see to be Tharoor's close relationship with Kofi Annan. Some of the criticisms that persist even in today's more gracious climate seem picayune. Then, forever there have been people on the lookout for reasons to bring a high flier down to earth. ("High flier" is a characterization that Tharoor's friend, David Rieff, a high-flier author himself, sometimes uses about him. Similar encomiums have come from Professor Klaus Schwab, president and founder of the Geneva based World Economic Forum, which named Tharoor to its prestigious list of "Global Leaders for Tomorrow.")

The criticism sometimes seems just plain petty. For example, because he picked up French during his time in Geneva and has a pretty good command of the language Tharoor likes to switch to it from English--he speaks a refined upper-class Oxbridge version--in his oral presentations before UN committees that oversee the information department. Showing off, some Anglophone critics sniff. Why would an Indian want to speak French since delegates from France don't bother much with UN image making, anyway. Smaller francophone members states, however, appreciate the nod to Moliere.

Tharoor's IQ is not in the public record, but it has to be very high. Thus, he is perceived by some colleagues as far too clever for his own good. Kofi Annan, whose style is a lot more relaxed, not to mention somewhat less intellectual, is said to have urged him to brake his fast-moving mind, desist from trying to be two steps ahead of the other fellow's argument and, therefore, far too quick in dismissing it. Friends say Tharoor is aware of the fault and makes a conscious attempt to slow down, give somebody else a chance.

Is it in the interests of a burdened department to be open to more and more requests and disinclined to say no? Here, too, the Tharoor style is sometimes faulted. Routinely, a working day is a chronic swamp, placing a punishing load on a hard pressed, understaffed department. He has also been urged not to be so quick to come up with answers for tough questions, but to pause and, for once, be at a loss for words and ideas; in short, stop being what some might call a show-off.

Tharoor the Company Man is another impression of him that some find irritating. His is an unwavering loyalty to the Organization coupled with an eagerness to justify and explain away its many imperfections. "The king can do no wrong." This applies also in his extreme loyalty to and affection for Annan, whom he has elevated to virtual sainthood. Friends say Tharoor can deal with that by pointing out that the most popular Secretary General since Hammarskjold really does not need the image maker's help and would win have won widespread acclaim quite conmfortably without it. Be that as it may.

What of Tharoor's future? Nitin Desai, a fellow Indian and the UN's outgoing Under Secretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, says unequivocally: "Shashi will go a long way." Since Tharoor is already an under secretary general, that, to many, seems to point eventually to the summit of a UN career, the 38th floor office occupied by Kofi Annan. But because of his celebrity status and his youth, Tharoor would have little difficulty in gaining access to the highest levels of international journalism, public relations, or investment banking--should he so choose.

Secretary General Annan is nearing the completion of the first year of a second five-year term that almost certainly will be his last, although there is no rule against re-election. U Thant would have been a shoo-in but for his failing health; Kurt Waldheim, the Austrian who succeeded him as the Organization turned again to Europe for a leader, saw his third-term aspirations blocked by China, which wanted a candidate from a developing country. This turned out to be Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru. He too stepped down after 10 years.

Hammarskjold called being Secretary General "the most impossible job in the world." So why would anyone want it? With no UN equivalent of Air Force One, or even an executive Gulfstream at beck and call, he must fly commercial unless a geneous member state offers to help with a plane. The pay--around $200,000 a year--is not that great and the only serious perk is a townhouse on the East River that was built for a daughter of the financier J. P. Morgan and acquired for the UN from a philanthropist in collaboration with the UN Association of the USA.

The demands of office are grinding, including frequent travel to faraway places. This has to take a toll: Annan, 64, looked tired and drawn on his return from a recent swing through the "Stan" states of the former Soviet Union. Six years of early mornings and late nights have ageed him considerably. He has revealed that he had to overcome Swedish-born wife Nane's reservations before agreeing last year to run for another term.

Still, there are those who might want the job because--with the possible exception of the President of the United States--it's arguably the most visible public position in the world. Tharoor would likely face competition from several fellow Asians: Singapore's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Kishore Mahbubani--an author, like Tharoor--is frequently mentioned as a candidate. So is Anwarul Karim Chowdhury of Bangladesh, currently Under Secretary General for the Least Developed States (who was once considered a rival of Kofi Annan). Then there's Razali Ismail, formerly Malaysia's chief envoy at the UN. There's Jayantha Dhanapala of Sri Lanka, the Under Secretary General for Disarmament Affairs. There's even talk that Cory Aquino, former President of the Philippines, might be tapped--making her the first woman secretary general of the UN. Some partisans have floated the name of Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi of India, who has been reportedly been taking more interest in UN activities lately.

Barring an unexpected event that might upset the schedule, it will be well into 2006 before the UN has to worry over who will be the next Secretary General. So it's not a matter today that brings blips to government radar screens, except perhaps those of some restive Asian members already beginning to eye future Asian prospects. In an Organization famous for procrastinating- the weeks of debate about Iraq is a classic example--it's a subject of very slight interest to the five permanent members of the Security Council that are critical to the final selection. They have lots of time to reserve their likes and dislikes, backed by the power of veto, to make or break an aspirant.

Over the years, vetoes have been cast thick and fast. For example, China voted no more than a dozen times in 1971 to block Kurt Waldheim. Finally, he threw in the sponge in his quest for an unprecedented third term. The US, France, Russia and Britain, the remaining permanent members, all had supported him.

It's been said that anyone who wants the job is smart to hesitate to declare, but rather make a show of reluctance. When U Thant saved the UN from Khrushchev, he didn't rush into the job but hung, a little diffidently, in the wings. (He didn't sign his letters Maung Thant, translated as "humble little brother" for nothing!) Boutros Boutros-Ghali's decision to announce for a second term in 1996, after Secretary of Warren Christopher personally delivered word of Washington's displeasure and intention to oppose him, was considered the height of folly. For this rash conduct in challenging a superpower, Boutros-Ghali suffered the ignominy of America's veto. It was a bitter blow to a proud man that he has not forgiven--as was made clear in his published memoirs.

To limit the risk of such formal vetoes and their impact on personal and national psyches, the Security Council in recent years developed a system of straw votes. This is a way to narrow the choices during closed door consultations, initially in confabs among the five permanent members and then the Council as a whole. Kofi Annan was selected this way, having initially encountered opposition by France, which strongly favored the re-election of Boutros-Ghali and fought hard on the Egyptian's behalf and against the US stand.

The actual election of a Secretary General--by custom, for five years--is done by the General Assembly, the primary deliberative body comprising all 191 UN member states. Once the favorite has received the Security Council's blessing for submission to the General Assembly, the process is completed in most cases by a vote of acclamation.

Just two years younger than Hammarskjold was when, in 1953, he was elected to succeed Trygve Lie, the founding Secretary General, Shashi Tharoor fairly exudes high voltage energy. (He works out regularly at a midtown Manhattan gym.) Seeing him today, a picture of robust health and movie-star looks, moving in brisk strides, often having a simultaneous cell phone conversation, it's hard to believe that this was once a sickly, asthmatic child often confined to bed and struggling to breathe. Therein lies the dawning of a distinguished literary career that has gone hand in hand with his life in the gray world of officialdom.