Writing in Asia Policy (July 2009), Daniel Markey, a former member of the US State Department's policy planning staff responsible for South Asia, examines the 'software' dimension of the Indian foreign policy establishment, ie the Indian Foreign Service and the 'foreign affairs community' (though Markey does not use this term), meaning the thinktanks and academic institutions working on international issues. Unsurprisingly, he concludes that these institutional shortcomings 'undermine the country's capacity for ambitious and effective international action'.
Institution building is not one of India's strong points. One reason is that many of us tend to work to short horizons. Within organisations, successors often unravel the part-completed structures built by predecessors, since too many of us think that those who came before us were not competent, and those that follow will probably be even worse.
The ministry of external affairs (MEA) differs from other ministries on several counts.
One: it has two large, parallel tasks: to translate into action the country's foreign policy, while providing feedback and advice into the formulation of this policy; to supervise a large, dispersed network of about 160 embassies and consulates a management task that throws up unique challenges.
Two: the rapid evolution in the world environment after the end of Cold War, and growth in India's capacity to engage the external world -- captured in the Markey essay -- make these tasks more difficult to handle, stretching MEA's human resources to the maximum.
Three: the Foreign Service is a distinct entity, special in its ethos and skill requirements. MEA's top official also heads this Service, supervising HR management tasks that have no parallel in other ministries.
Four: With the diplomacy process more public than ever before, abroad and at home, MEA also faces a special accountability challenge. It works for 'whole of government' coherence in external policy, vis-a-vis all home agencies.
Markey confirms a well-established fact, that the Foreign Service is much too small in numbers to perform the task of diplomacy management for an emerging power, whose domestic achievements of the past two decades mandate a larger world role.
Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon confirmed this in April 2007, while announcing plans to double the Foreign Service from its then figure of around 660. Two years since that ambitious announcement, it would be appropriate for Menon, on the eve of retirement from his current post, to disclose how this has been put into action, and the measures that are planned.
The Indian foreign affairs community is minuscule by any reckoning -- and much too Delhi-centric. Ambitious educational institution development programmes of the 1960s and '70s, to establish region and area study programmes in different cities and states, have largely withered away, with just a few notable exceptions.
Evidently, state governments have little interest in supporting intellectual outreach to their neighbouring geographic regions; the resources provided by the Centre have been much too inadequate. For a country the size of India, a single JNU is grossly inadequate as the sole major centre for international studies. The few other centres and institutes specialising in external studies desperately need resources and manpower, plus imaginative new study programmes.
Markey makes another key point: 'US officials familiar with the past several years of Indian diplomacy already recognise a major cost associated with Indian's tiny foreign service: it can be nearly impossible to advance several policy priorities in parallel. India's few circuits are too quickly overloaded. The US-India nuclear deal and associated negotiations occupied the bulk of MEA's energy for several years, forcing a raft of other laudable goals -- agriculture, science and technology, space, defence, and democracy promotion -- off to the side.' This too is a management capacity issue, with a special twist.
Every foreign ministry confronts two parallel tasks. These are: policy advice plus its formulation; and management of the dispersed diplomatic network and its human resources. Some foreign ministries separate the two roles, entrusting them to different top officials. In the US, the undersecretary of state for political affairs counterpart to our foreign secretary -- has nothing to do with institution management, which is the task of another undersecretary of state. Other countries such as Germany and Tunisia, among others, follow such a model. The foreign ministries with a single head like ours, be it France or the UK, practice de facto delegation.
The secretary general at the Quai d'Orsay, and the permanent undersecretary at the FCO, retain the principal foreign policy advisor role, but they delegate its operation to senior deputies who directly handle the negotiations and policy advice functions; the secretary general and the permanent undersecretary keep an eye on the policy scene, but the bulk of their time is spent on managing the diplomatic system. They seldom travel abroad, or directly handle negotiations with foreign partners.
Trying to ride both the policy and management horses is today simply not possible. The outcome, so familiar in MEA, is that the urgent policy tasks take precedence over vital management actions, which by their nature are frequently not so urgent. This is more visible if the foreign secretary continually takes on policy dialogue-driven overseas travel.
What does this mean in practical terms? In the Indian ethos, the head of the Foreign Service simply cannot shed the Service management role. The only practical alternative for the foreign secretary then is to delegate a sizable portion of the policy execution task, while retaining the position of the first policy adviser. On paper, this is possible because there are in the MEA at least three other senior officials, full secretaries, who are equal in rank to the foreign secretary. The paradox has been that they are relatively underworked, but do not get to share much of the policy execution tasks that are centralised in the foreign secretary's hands.
MEA -- and the Prime Minister -- should treat the induction of a new foreign secretary as the occasion for full review, aimed at strengthening the management of the diplomatic system. In parallel, the capacity of MEA to undertake policy execution can also become stronger with measured devolution, aimed at stronger policy oversight, relying on a more collegial order.
With this, an injustice also needs correction. About four years back, several top ministry appointees were given a minimum tenure of two years (ie the defence, finance and home secretaries); the foreign secretary was left out, for reasons that were never enunciated. Ensuring that all foreign secretaries hold their appointments for at least two years, as happened with the two recent, outstanding incumbents, Shyam Saran and Shankar Menon, would ensure management continuity and meaningfully strengthen MEA.
The author is a former diplomat, author and teacher
