As the Times of India’s Indrani Bagchi pointedly wrote:
MEA’s mandarins can be the smartest people alive, but it’s impossible to expect them to ruminate on policy [and take] strategic initiatives, all the while fighting fires every day, several times a day, pushing files, answering parliament questions, receiving dignitaries, assisting the PM during summits, and then greeting returning Indians evacuated from the latest disaster zone in the world at 2 am in the morning before reporting for work at 9 am. And to then work out where India’s global footprint should be a decade from now.
Another acute observer, David Malone, wrote that the MEA’s
headquarters staff work punishing hours, not least preparing the visits of the many foreign dignitaries laying siege to Delhi in ever growing numbers as India’s importance has expanded … India’s overburdened Foreign Service is, on average, of very high quality, but because it is stretched so thin, its staff spends too much of its time conducting India’s international relations through narrow diplomatic channels, managing ministerial and other visits, negotiating memoranda of understanding of no great significance, and by other means that reflect only a fraction of the rich reality of international relations today and of official Delhi’s actual international interests.
The problem has not escaped the attention of the professionals. In 2008, Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon moved a Cabinet note proposing a doubling of his effective diplomatic strength. The government agreed to increase the cadre by 520 personnel (320 in the IFS category and 200 additional support staff), but the hierarchy-minded bureaucracy immediately stepped in to forestall any dramatic expansion which would have required, for instance, the infusion of external professional talent at all levels of the MEA by mid-career recruitment from the other services or even (perish the thought!) from the private sector. Instead of reaching beyond the government to people who could fill the gaps in the service — more French and Spanish speakers, for instance, or more professional journalists for public diplomacy positions — the implementation of the Cabinet decision was stretched out over ten years by simply increasing the annual intake into the IFS (including promotions from the clerical grades of the IFS ‘B’) by thirty-two a year. Even this has not materialized, since the MEA has not found thirty-two worthy candidates in each of the three years since the Cabinet approved Menon’s proposal. Lateral entrants have not been encouraged; a circular to the other government departments soliciting candidacies have turned up few whom the MEA is excited about. The chronic understaffing is therefore likely to continue for more than another decade.
The Indian diplomatic corps has long enjoyed a justified reputation as among the world’s best in individual talent and ability. It includes men and women of exceptional intellectual and personal distinction who have acquired formidable reputations in a variety of capitals. Indian diplomats over the years have won in print the admiration of Henry Kissinger, Strobe Talbott and other distinguished memoirists who have dealt with them professionally; several have distinguished themselves not only in India’s service but in international organizations and conferences. The critique developed in these pages is not in any way meant to reflect on any member of this capable and widely respected corps. It seeks instead to examine institutional failings which are evident despite the quality of the individuals who operate within them.
The IFS is recruited by competitive examinations held by the Union Public Service Commission across the country, followed by a personality test. The diplomatic corps is selected from the same examinations from which emerge the domestic services, like the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), the Indian Police Service, the Indian Revenue Service, and so on. The examinations have always been firmly grounded in the generalist tradition, the only three compulsory subjects being an essay, general English and general knowledge. There are five additional papers, three out of twenty-four broad options (such as Indian history, chemistry, etc.) and two requiring slightly more advanced knowledge (British constitutional history was a popular example). The top cumulative scorers are invited to appear before an interview board which tested their knowledge, behaviour and presence of mind and the eventual selection sought to produce ‘bright young men (or women) of 21 to 24 years, who have the requisite intellectual ability, breadth of mind and mental discipline’ for diplomatic service. (The age limit has now been relaxed to twenty-eight.)
For decades the cream of the examination crop opted for the IFS: in the years after independence, when resources and foreign exchange scarcities made travel abroad a rare privilege, a job that took you abroad frequently was prized by the middle-class families whose sons (and sometimes daughters) took the civil service examinations. From the 1950s to the 1970s, it was customary for the foreign service to draw its entrants almost exclusively from the top ten finishers in the annual examinations. This has now changed dramatically. Not only has the far more powerful Indian Administrative Service supplanted the IFS as the service of choice, but even the more lucrative Indian Revenue Service — which places officers in the customs and tax administrations, where financial incentives are considerable — is preferred over the IFS by many applicants. As a result it is now common for the IFS to find itself selecting officers ranked below 250 in the examinations, something that had been unthinkable to the officers currently heading the MEA. (The decline in prestige of the foreign service has also been enabled by the relative ease of foreign travel, which has negated what used to be seen as the IFS’s principal perquisite, and the widespread perception that diplomats neither wield as much clout nor have as many opportunities to salt away a retirement nest-egg as their domestic counterparts.) The further complication of this problem is that several civil service aspirants are thrust unwillingly into the MEA while their real ambition is to serve elsewhere — a far cry from the glory days but one that does not produce a dedicated and proud foreign service.
The recruits are then trained at the National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, for three months, and then at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in New Delhi for about a year, attending courses on such subjects as the Indian Constitution, international law, international relations and diplomacy. The stint at FSI includes a month-long district attachment, visits to India’s borders, a tour of the country (‘Bharat Darshan’, or literally ‘seeing India’), a brief exposure to the working of an Indian mission abroad followed by a six-month-long MEA desk attachment. Then there is a final language-training stint of one or two years at a mission abroad. The total amounts to a three-year training period, less than half of which is related to the direct concerns of the professional on the job.