Daniel Markey on Developing India’s Foreign Policy Software

Daniel Markey (Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations) has written an insightful analysis in the Asia Policy, (No.8, July 2009) titled “Developing India’s Foreign Policy Software”. The article outlines significant shortcomings in India’s foreign policy institutions that undermine the country’s capacity for ambitious and effective international action, and proposes steps that both New Delhi and Washington should take, assuming they aim to promote India’s rise as a great power. Some of Daniel’s observations are worrisome but real.

The main argument of the article is as follows - India’s own foreign policy establishment hinders the country from achieving great-power status for four main reasons: (1) The Indian Foreign Service is small, hobbled by its selection process and inadequate midcareer training, and tends not to make use of outside expertise; (2) India’s think-tanks lack sufficient access to the information or resources required to conduct high-quality, policy-relevant scholarship; (3) India’s public universities are poorly funded, highly regulated, and fail to provide world-class education in the social sciences and other fields related to foreign policy; and (4) India’s media and private firms—leaders in debating the country’s foreign policy agenda—are not built to undertake sustained foreign policy research or training.

According to Daniel, today the IFS remains remarkably small. The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) is one of India’s leanest ministries in part because the MEA has no natural domestic constituency or champion—unlike, for instance, the ministries governing railways or commerce and industry. With fewer than eight hundred professional diplomats and an annual budget of just over half a billion dollars in fiscal year (FY) 2006–07, the service is stretched across 119 resident missions and 49 consulates around the world. Daniel quotes a U.S. diplomat as stating that the IFS may be right-sized for Malaysia but is certainly not for a country with India’s global aspirations. He further adds that the MEA’s in-house policy planning office is widely panned as irrelevant, disconnected from serious policy concerns, and incapable of high quality output.  A large portion of MEA policy formulation and debate is apparently conducted by in-person or phone conversations rather than through careful written analysis, though this pattern may be changing.

India’s foreign policy think-tanks lack sufficient access to the information, expertise, and resources required to conduct world-class, policy-relevant scholarship. India’s corporate sector has not fully embraced the peculiarly American model of sponsoring independent research organizations and providing no-strings-attached grants.

The following comment by a member of an Indian Think Tank is most scary, “I can barely find a PhD from an Indian university capable of writing a single high-quality page of English text.”  The young talent is easily attracted to more lucrative opportunities in the private sector.

Daniel further compares India’s recruitment and policy making process in the foreign services with that of China to highlight remarkable differences. In the author’s analysis for India to achieve great-power status, a number of improvements to its foreign policy software will be required:

• expand, reform, pay, and train the Indian Foreign Service to attract and retain high caliber officers
• encourage the growth of world-class social science research and teaching schools in India through partnerships with private Indian and U.S. investors, universities, and foundations
• invest in Indian think-tanks and U.S.-India exchange programs that build capacity for foreign policy research
• bring non-career officers into the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and other parts of the foreign policy establishment as term-limited fellows to improve outside understanding of the policy process
• support the efforts of Indian researchers to maximize public access to material related to the history of India’s foreign policy by way of the 2005 Right to Information Acte.

Two important observations by Daniel stand out. First, running an overly lean foreign policy apparatus almost guarantees that India will have trouble anticipating and acting ahead of future trends. A fire-fighting or just-in-time approach to foreign affairs, no matter how efficient, is bound to be reactive rather than proactive. Second, it can be nearly impossible to advance several policy priorities in parallel. India’s few circuits are too quickly overloaded. The U.S.-India nuclear deal and associated negotiations occupied the bulk of the MEA’s energy for several years, forcing a raft of other laudable goals—agriculture, science and technology, space, defense, and democracy promotion—off to the side.

Having being a long-time constructive critique of the way in which India’s diplomacy is conducted, I completely agree with Daniel Markey’s assessment.