The IFS has at least managed to overcome its earlier deficiencies in language training. Indian universities had at best limited facilities in European languages, and even less in African, Asian and Middle Eastern ones. Formal linguistic training was poor by international standards; this has now improved, with greater emphasis on learning languages in the countries where they are spoken. Even the coursework IFS recruits underwent was mediocre in such subjects as area studies, for which the Indian academic infrastructure was inadequate, and far too focused on pablum like (in the bad old days) ‘promoting Indo-Soviet friendship’. Opportunities for mid-career sabbaticals were limited to the occasional year in the United States or Britain, the two countries about which the average IFS officer was already well informed. These are still the favoured destinations for those who take the time to go and study abroad, but the choice is now wider.
Not every diplomat emerges from the training process well enough equipped in the ‘soft skills’ required in international diplomacy to function effectively, though their mastery of their assigned foreign language is now usually impressive. But then language training, too, is not always reflected in assignments: I have frequently come across Indian diplomats in non-Anglophone European capitals whose foreign language was Chinese, a series of ambassadors in Paris who could not speak French, and (as I pointed out in a Parliament question in 2011) not one of India’s nine ambassadors stationed in the countries of the Gulf at that time spoke or had learned Arabic. Surely we can aim at a time when every national language is spoken by at least one Indian officer and an eventual time when every one of our missions is headed by an ambassador who knows the language, be it Khmer or Korean, Spanish or Swahili?
The effect of the foreign service’s bureaucratic stranglehold on the MEA merits attention, particularly because the Pillai committee too recommended a broader-based recruitment process that would seek out professionals in various fields, between the ages of twenty-eight and thirty-five, for mid-career employment in the foreign service. The idea was to compensate for the lack of experience and the consequently more restricted vision of the standard process which recruited only twenty-one-to twenty-four-year-olds, who ‘grew’ in the MEA within the norms and confines of the foreign office bureaucracy. The Pillai report suggested that 15 to 20 per cent of the annual recruitment be set aside for older recruits ‘to permit entry of persons with specialized knowledge of international relations and area studies, experience in management and administration and public relations’. The recommendation was never implemented and the thinking behind it continues to be strongly resisted by the entrenched bureaucracy. Ironically the need is even greater today than when Pillai did his work nearly half a century ago. In today’s multilateral diplomacy, for instance, the MEA needs expertise that it cannot provide from its own ranks. For instance, climate change has become a hot-button diplomatic issue that needs to be discussed and negotiated in multilateral forums where other delegations rely on technical and scientific expertise that they find indispensable, but which the MEA eschews because it is unwilling to look beyond its own ranks (or those of its retired grandees). In an era when a certain level of specialization is considered essential by many foreign ministries, Indian diplomacy still abounds in talented generalists. Concomitantly, there is no threat to officialdom’s established way of doing things.
That ‘way’ originated in the ICS under the British, when Indian officials functioned under the obligation of proving their worth to their white colleagues, and accordingly placed a premium on individual brilliance and success. The first generation of senior MEA officers, raised in this tradition, institutionalized the ego in bureaucratic procedure, undercutting rivals, sheltering behind seniority and seeking self-advancement as the principal priority in their careers. Under Nehru, these tendencies had received full play: he was less interested, as a critic noted, in institutionalizing a policy-making ministry than in creating a body to reflect his views. Originality in thought and action was thus at a discount. This was augmented by the political culture’s emphasis on a ‘non-political’ bureaucracy primarily responsible for implementation of policies made elsewhere; deprived of ultimate authority, officials were largely content to concentrate on their own advancement. While some of this remains true of any bureaucracy, the increasing clout of the foreign service — as the repository of precedent, the storehouse of experience and the legatee of diplomatic practice — in relation to increasingly underprepared political masters, has improved matters considerably. In all fairness, it is essential to state that there are many efficient, achievement-oriented men and women of vision in the MEA — some of whom helped frame this analysis. But their impact was circumscribed by several of the attitudinal and institutional factors traced above.
These limitations on effective professional performance were underscored by other factors, notably inadequate specialization and training. The IFS recruits’ initial three-year training included little of direct applicability in a diplomatic situation. Academic coursework was no substitute for professionalism, and a few months spent in those days in the Indian countryside did not compensate for poor grounding in foreign life and customs. Paradoxically there was greater need for IFS recruits to be exposed to Indian conditions in order to make them more representative of their nation than they were; but a few weeks in a village as visiting government officials were hardly enough. At the same time, the ersatz Westernization of the urban elite was no better preparation for international diplomacy than it was for rural uplift. But advocates of a year’s training at a foreign institution (such as selected entrants received at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in the early 1950s) were defeated by the domestic bureaucrats, whose anxiety to maintain a par between the IAS and the IFS was matched by their desire to be involved as much as possible in India’s external affairs. This too has finally changed, with stints at institutions abroad becoming much more widely available at various stages of a diplomat’s career. But as one retired ambassador observed, ‘Training at any level in the IFS means listening to a series of lectures. These vary in quality and usefulness. At no time is any training given for two of the most important functions expected of officers at every leveclass="underline" political and economic reporting and recording of conversations [or record of discussions (RODs), as this is known in MEA parlance].’ The neglect of these basics has created a service that, at its junior levels, is woefully underprepared for the obligations of international diplomacy.
The training process has been strengthened with the establishment of the Foreign Service Institute, which provides some induction as well as mid-career training, but reports of its efficacy are mixed. Assignment to the FSI is not prized by the best of the MEA’s professionals, who tend to regard a stint there as the equivalent of being sidelined, and this in turn has had a direct bearing on the way the fresh crop is tended. Although the FSI has acquired impressive new premises close to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the physical infrastructure has not been matched by faculty development or even by the development of a standardized and modern curriculum (much depends, one recent trainee told me, ‘on the whims and fancies of the dean’). The FSI has no institutional or accreditation links with JNU or any other university and is yet to develop into a centre of excellence in its own right.
Mid-career training is still a blight on the MEA’s performance. The IFS is the only service in India’s bureaucracy which does not have an effective, well-structured mid-career training programme (or MCTP, which the department of personnel and training of the Government of India encourages all branches of the All India and Central Services to devise). While most services have well-organized training programmes spread over various phases of an official’s career — which includes training in the relevant service institute and a foreign component — the MCTP for IFS officers is rather limited in scope and design. It is confined to two phases, the first of which (required to be completed for promotion from the rank of director to joint secretary) includes only answering some assignment questions and writing a monograph. (Given the years the average director must have spent on writing policy documents, Cabinet notes and notes verbales, this is hardly a training exercise, since the skills needed should have been acquired on the job anyway.) The second phase (required for promotion from joint secretary to additional secretary) includes a week’s training in a management institute and one week at the FSI — negligible in comparison with global standards and hardly adequate to keep up with the worldwide revolution in the concepts and practices of foreign policy planning and implementation. IFS officers are also systematically denied exposure to how other diplomatic services and foreign policy establishments work, on the specious grounds that IFS officers do not need foreign exposure as they are in any case serving around the world. Despite the occasional authorized stint (often at the individual officer’s own initiative) in a foreign institute’s seminar or course, there is little world-class training imparted to the mid-career diplomatic professional. It is clear that the training programmes of IFS officers are not on a par with what other diplomatic services are providing and not even with what other domestic services are doing for their officers.