Thaindian News

New Delhi, June 6 (IANS)Sanjaya Baru, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s former media adviser, will return in August to take up a new assignment in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
Knowledegable sources told IANS Baru’s next job would be related to policy making and will be a key position in Manmohan Singh’s second tenure in office.

Baru is presently a visiting professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, a position he took up last August after resigning from the government, and a consulting senior fellow of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, London.

“He will not return as the media advisor. It will be a challenging job,” a senior official, who declined to be identified, told IANS.

Between May 2004 and July 2008, Baru was media adviser to Manmohan Singh, his spokesperson and principal speechwriter. An economist by training, Baru, 55, has had a illustrious career in both media and academia.

According to highly placed sources, even while he was in Singapore on his teaching assignment, Baru has kept in touch and wrote up some of the prime minister’s speeches.

Regarded as a leading authority on global economics, Baru has often described working with a scholar-administrator-politician like Manmohan Singh as an “educational experience”.

Baru’s high points in the PMO when he was media adviser was organsing the first national press conference of Manmohan Singh at Vigyan Bhavan that was attended by over 500 journalists.

With his economic background (he has also served as editor of Financial Express and resident editor, Economic Times) he was a trusted aide of Manmohan Singh who often bounced off some of his policy ideas off Baru.