So, what does a delegation do?

The impression given by 'Dispatches', which so lovingly covered the Parliamentary delegation to the South Pacific last week, is that most of these trips are just a bit of a jolly, with no real work involved and an opportunity to finish off their tan.

And, sadly, sometimes it is true. Sometimes, it isn't. It is hard to imagine that a trip to Rwanda is going to offer much in the way of 'touristical activities', and even those aspects that look like tourism are often designed to expose a delegation to something new. You can, if you wish, ask 'difficult' questions - although diplomacy insists that you pose such questions with discretion and courtesy. Indeed, such probing oftens allows both sides to get a better grasp of the issues that unite and divide.

The delegation has already met with a Union Minister (the equivalent of a Cabinet Minister at home), the Deputy National Security Advisor, the Deputy Chairman of the Rajya Sabha (roughly equivalent to the House of Lords), think tanks and statutory bodies. These sessions require some preparation, the ability to drink copious amounts of tea, and a sense of perspective.

Sometimes, you have to accept that there is a gulf between our approach to problems and that of an Indian politician or bureaucrat. When you talk about human rights, you have to balance that with the fact that 750 million Indians live on less than two dollars per day. Are questions of access for the disabled a matter of primary importance if the rural poor in Bihar or Orissa are starving for lack of irrigation? Is unequal access to services relevant if 450 million people have no access to reliable electricity?

Those things that we take for granted, the political and organisational models that we apply, risk being out of place here, and if we insist in viewing a foreign country through the prism of those concepts, there is every chance that you leave frustrated.

This delegation has also offered an opportunity for those present to get a better idea of how India really works. We have, on one hand, a romanticised vision of India, all colonial Raj, and on the other, talk of call centres and IT. India is a mass of contradictions, a man on his oxcart talking on his mobile phone. However, with so much attention being lavished on China, the other potential superpower of the future, with one-sixth of the world's population within its borders, is in danger of becoming overlooked. Hopefully, this trip will serve to counterbalance that to some small extent.