Jaishankar’s ‘strong’ statements at public platforms are good, but are they propelling India’s global standing?

And so here we are again. Just over a year after Rihanna and a bunch of celebrity influencers tweeted about the farmers’ protests, Padma Lakshmi and Mesut Ozil on Thursday tweeted about the “genocide of Muslims” in India. Meanwhile, the USCIRF released a report slamming India and citing it as a “country of particular concern”. While the USCIRF, Rihanna, Padma Lakshmi, Ozil and co. are as relevant to international politics as Rakhi Sawant’s green chilli party was to the 2014 general elections, the fact remains that these are the most visible faces of a complete loss of narrative that India has been facing for the last eight years without any pushback whatsoever. The current face of that loss of narrative is External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

When he took office in 2019, Jaishankar was hailed as a major reformer who was here to change the course of Indian foreign policy. Yet, three years down the line, his only great achievement seems to be some glib one or two liners at international conferences, which send Indian nationalist Twitter into orgasm. On the ground all the indicators are of compound mismanagement or wilful neglect, with the alleged “triumphs” being entirely extraneous.

Consider this. In Modi 1.0 the big discussion was about expanding the foreign service to about 3,500 people — the bare minimum required to be a viable source of primary intelligence gathering, and meaningful ground engagement with power centres internationally. At that time the strength of the foreign service was an abysmal 700 diplomats plus (the same size as Singapore’s foreign service). Today that number is down to 600 plus. This lack of diplomats means you are extremely hard-pressed to collect primary data. When you can’t collect primary data you can’t predict international policy and when you can’t accurately predict international policy, you end up substituting post facto petulant rhetoric — like $45 trillion robbed by the British from India or openly available figures of European purchases of Russian energy — as “stunning intelligence and policy stewardship”. Repartee is an essential skill for a spokesperson, but for a spokesperson to become a diplomat, administration, institution building, intelligence gathering and pre-emption are much more important skills that we see absolutely no evidence of.

This is, of course, compounded by the rot in the foreign service itself, which is unable to deploy what meagre human resources it has available effectively or enforce any discipline given that once you enter the IFS you know you’re guaranteed a joint-secretary-ship or ambassadorship irrespective of your performance. Our ambassadors to Washington for example instead of preemptively engaging with Congressmen to brief them about alleged Muslim genocides and Sikh oppression would rather host think-tankers of dubious utility or outright hostility at parties to line up their own post-retirement fellowships and board membership. Our High Commissioners to the UK have increasingly started doing the same including collaborating with literature fests featuring the most virulently anti-India voices.

Meanwhile, some Indian diplomats at the UN whose speeches go viral on Twitter, openly slam “India’s fascist Muslim hating government” at parties in New York while living on the taxpayer dime. Back in Delhi, Guardian journalist Hannah Ellis Peterson openly threatens “to bring down the government with a single piece I write” but despite several intra-governmental requests to have her visa cancelled, the MEA “opposes on principle” such cancellation. The principle in this case apparently being some MEA official’s children’s scholarship at Oxbridge and the possibility of post-retirement employment in the UK. Even such basic problems like basic monitoring and discipline have not been done.

So how come none of these diplomats are ever held responsible for their actions? Because they have a vested interest in allowing situations like Ilhan Omar to blow up. The lack of accountability means that slow hard groundwork is neither recognised nor incentivised. Invariably our best, most hardworking diplomats get a “too smart by half” tag. The incompetent ones make headlines through glib remarks and the 2 minutes 20 seconds viral publicity are an acceptable substitute for years of hard unglamorous groundwork. Allowing problems to fester and blow up and then presenting yourself as fighting a valiant (but ultimately futile) 300 Spartans action has been a tried and tested method of getting ahead in the MEA for some 75 years now.

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What’s worse is the taking of credit for situations that have nothing to do with us. Consider this: The two major factors in the last three years — Mohammed bin Salman’s reversal of Saudi Arabia’s formerly hostile policy towards India, and the sudden flurry of diplomatic activity in Delhi. The former has everything to do with a reset with Israel engineered by the Trump administration and an ab-initio rethink of Saudi policy stances which were horribly out of date. The sudden flurry of visits to India has everything to do with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and little to do with us, unless you’re counting a white man landing in Delhi as a major policy achievement. Yet, you’d be mistaken for believing that this was all adroit Indian diplomacy.

The main reason you’d believe this is the supine Indian journalists’ corps that claims to cover the foreign policy beat. Spendthrift editors simply don’t have the resources to send their foreign correspondents abroad for primary research. Consequently, MEA beat journalists are more addicted to, and dependent on, MEA access than most meth-heads are to their crystal methamphetamine dealers. Their job depends on getting handouts and self-serving “exclusives” which can only be acquired by some significant brown-nosing. This is why you’ll find that the so-called “free press” whose job it is to hold the MEA and IFS to account will rhapsodise over banal diplomatic rhetoric but pass on the MEA’s failures to the PMO and the Prime Minister.

The PMO for its part is not blameless in all of this. Chronic micromanagement by the PMO has reduced the entire Cabinet to mere rubber stamps; Jaishankar being no exception and his wings possibly being clipped. Now micromanagement would be great, if the PMO had the bandwidth for dealing with foreign policy. But given that in eight years there is not a single foreign press narrative that this government has been able to beat back the benchmark isn’t very high. Irrespective, the MEA should be acting as a failure compensation mechanism — instead the foreign minister cites Western press figures to the Western press, while his subordinates sleep on the job or use it for lining up post-retirement jobs and children’s scholarships.

In the end, Jaishankar’s and his colleagues’ glib speeches are about as relevant as Rihanna or Ozil’s tweets. They are mere indicators — indicators of the deep rot that has set in and allowed to fester without diagnosis or treatment. If this is not dealt with, the consequences India will face will be no different than 1962 with a Krishna Menon sleeping on his job while making deliciously snarky speeches.

The writer is a senior fellow at the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

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