In France, there’s a calm on Carla

There is another major reason for this Carla calm. The honour of hogging the limelight for reasons that at once infuriate and captivate the French has suddenly shifted to a 31-year-old “junior trader” of the second-largest bank here, Societe Generale. He is potentially the author of the biggest trading fraud in history, having blown an unimaginable $7 billion. He is far from sexy, but has, unlike the harmlessly outrageous Bruni, meant serious damage.

So President Sarkozy’s visit to India is not on the front page of either of the major dailies here, Le Monde and Le Figaro. The left-leaning Liberation, however, has put a full-page picture of Manmohan Singh and Sarkozy having a hearty laugh, with the headline: “Why it irritates the planet”.

In the vitriolic article that targets Indian media as much as Sarkozy, Liberation says Bruni may not be there but Sarkozy can’t shake off the new image he has created. “After the Cecelia episode, it is his style, his luxury tastes and the reckless adventures of his private life . . . that are dissected by the mass media of the whole world.”

For days, the daily says, speedy Sarko and sexy Carla occupy whole pages in the dailies of the country (India), with Bollywood-like portraits dedicated to them. “Nothing, on the other hand, on French diplomacy or reforms . . . Sarkozy, moreover, hit the Indian leaders by the extreme fastness of the visit . . .”

A page-three report in Le Figaro, with a picture of him with his Indian counterpart, who looks like she was setting a dove free, says Sarkozy launched a “true operation of seduction” even if it “came without Carla Bruni, very (eagerly) awaited by the Indian press”.

It says how Sarkozy must have felt lonely in New Delhi where the leaders are “laconic”. “The Indian prime minister speaks not much . . . the president gave the impression that she would have a dialogue all alone . . .”

Anyway, Le Figaro says, the “bilateral relation . . . stays nice in principles alone”.

The leading newspaper here, Le Monde, appears to back this view. In an analysis marking the visit, it says how France comes a cold third in India’s strategic priorities in a world where India wants to keep an equal but profitable distance from both America and China: “ . . . to think that New Delhi has eyes clinched on the gestures of goodwill emanating from Paris would be as haughty as delusive. It is only to be determined from the slowness with which Indian reacts to the French offer of services in civil nuclear collaboration — subordinated to the implementation of a much more ambitious agreement with the US.”

Even the often pesky Le Parisien has left the president and his girlfriend alone.

Sarkozy’s biggest political achievement in India seems to be the critical lull he has achieved here on the personal front.