Since then there have been two acting heads of the US embassy in New Delhi. Daniel Smith, who was appointed the charge d’affaires in April, was succeeded on his retirement by another senior career diplomat AtulKeshap, who was named in June.

Fifteen of the 23 ambassadors in New Delhi have been political appointees and included distinguished personalities like former governors Richard Frank Celeste and Chester Bowles (who served twice), former members of Congress like Kenneth Keating, Sherman Cooper and William Saxbe, and public intellectuals John Kenneth Galbraith and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had also been a senator.

Earlier this month, MrGarcetti accompanied the Los Angeles baseball team, Dodgers, to a White House reception honoring their World Series championship victory. President Biden, who hosted them, said cryptically in jest, “I don’t know, man. I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle Garcetti if you win twice. I mean, it’s going to be hard, really hard.” If that were to happen, President Biden, a fan of the rival Philadelphia team, the Phillies, now wouldn’t have to suffer put-downs from MrGarcetti.

In Dhaka, Mr Haas is set to succeed another career diplomat, Earl Miller, who took charge in 2018. Mr Haas worked in South Asia as the consul general in Mumbai. He obtained a master’s degree in economics from the London School of Economics as a Marshal Fellow and specialized in trade and business diplomacy at the State Department. He is an acting assistant secretary of state and concurrently the principal deputy assistant secretary for economic and business affairs. Earlier, he had been a senior advisor and deputy assistant secretary for trade policy and negotiations and deputy permanent representative of the US at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.