The amazing empathy shown by the public after the tsunami disaster demands some lateral thinking at the level of statecraft - not just money and military aid, nor the gestural embarrassment of sending uninvited Ghurkas when Tamil territory couldn't get access to clean water.
The disaster area is full of paradox. These are faraway places that we know very well. They have been playgrounds of the privileged, and the rich West has plundered them and poached their people. They are not only under-developed, they have been de-developed. They fulfil our desert island fantasies while globalisation redistributes their skilled people to richer societies. Thais, Indonesians, Indians and Sri Lankans are key workers in a global traffic in human skills.
People of Asian origin constitute Britain's biggest ethnic minority. There are, for example, up to 200,000 Tamils estimated to be living in Britain.
But a telephone call last week to the council of a city with one of the UK's largest Asian populations was met by an automaton announcing, 'If you are calling about anti-social behaviour, press...' No number for the disaster operation, no number for concerned Asians.
The children's charities that form part of the Disasters Emergency Committee appealed for experienced international humanitarian aid workers.
These may be few, but Asian workers in Britain have skills in infrastructure, electronics, emergency services, transport, education and health, and, of course, the work of care. Their relationship to 'home' and 'here' invites us to imagine a new reciprocal arrangement: Tamils and Thais, Indians and Indonesians staffing our hospitals, nurseries and schools are entitled to expect that British generosity will regard them as not only a resource to exploit, but as a resource in the work of rescue.
The orphans and traumatised children of the disaster have been dispossessed in every way. They need special protection; they need counsellors and carers who can communicate in their own tongue; and they need workers by hand and brain who know their terrain.
It would be a noble initiative for national and local government to organise an emergency scheme, a sabbatical, for workers - from nursery workers to administrators and artisans - with a personal stake in these regions who might want to be part of their rescue.
While the Prime Minister was whiling away a sunny New Year, he and his government could have been re-thinking those paradoxes, and re-engaging our unique human resources for the reconstruction.
