June 2015 Archives

In the Land Where Democracy Was Born, a Historic Chance for its Affirmation

On the 5th of July the Greeks will either make their own history or agree to live within the confines of one that is being written for them. In India, many of us will be waiting for the referendum’s result with a thumping heart, and a secret hope.

On the 5th of July the Greeks will either make their own history or agree to live within the confines of one that is being written for them. In India, many of us will be waiting for the referendum’s result with a thumping heart, and a secret hope.

Shining Light of Democracy.: The Parthenon in Athens catches the last rays of the sunset as seen from the south. Photo by Robert Gourley, CC 2.0.

THE SHINING LIGHT OF DEMOCRACY: The Parthenon in Athens catches the last rays of the sun at dusk.
Photo by Robert Gourley, CC 2.0.

The referendum in Greece next Sunday is about much more than a country accepting or rejecting an austerity package. Torn between narrow self-interest fuelled by economic fear and the higher calling of democratic assertion, the people of Greece are being asked to affirm who is to be in charge of their future. Will they themselves decide what the country’s political course is to be or will creditors be allowed dictate how their country must be run? It is the kind of moment that beckons irrational heroism. People around the world can have an opinion but it is difficult for anyone to make this decision for the Greek people, or to even give them advice about it. In the end, it is the Greeks who will have to live with the consequences of their decision.

If Greece votes ‘Yes’ for the austerity deal on Sunday and accepts the harsh conditions of its creditors, the world will simply roll on. Just as it has for the past many years, with our political and democratic agency, and institutions, completely numbed by the neoliberal global economic system. This system only knows self-aggrandisement and accepts engagement only on its own terms. There is no democratic assertion, no revolution, that can stand in its way. It is normally not even clear whom one should rebel against. The most potent feature of the current system is that it hides itself so well even while being everywhere. No clear target is visible about which one can easily say, this is the system’s nerve-centre, if you destroy it, it will be dead and gone. Or even that you would have hurt it grievously. That is why rare occasions like the current Greek referendum are so significant. The worldwide community of ‘investors’ knows its significance, even if others do not.

If Greece votes ‘No’, this would indeed be historic and possibly path-breaking. It would a moment of democratic release for the Greek people and the whole world will want to share in it, such is the current political suffocation caused by the neoliberalism that we all live under. One must hurry to say once again: we are no one to judge how the Greeks should vote, because they will be voting with and for their lives and their future – whether in a good direction or bad. We cannot ask them to be the fuel to ignite the revolution for the rest of us, even when there is a chance that they could be the vanguard of a momentous worldwide change that history will celebrate in times to come.

The manner in which politics has become completely chained to financial capital is so seamless that people around the world are desperate to see the first cracks. There is anger at the way international creditors are telling Greece not to raise taxes on big business but to cut pensions in order to gather money to pay them back. The way credit agencies can tell the Indian nation that they are better advised to cut social spending than tax the affluent. The way global corporations can challenge and escape ‘sovereign’ social policies under the investor dispute clauses of global trade treaties. People today have all democratic rights until the time they clash with the needs and demands of global capital. Those needs and demands are everywhere and all-consuming. They leave very little space free for democracy.

Global capital has long since declared itself free from politics and democracy. Increasingly, as we see in Greece, it has now begun to claim control over politics and democracy. It wants to run the Greek nation and its policies. Obviously, ‘they’ are aghast that their new demands are being put to vote through a referendum so that people decide whether to accept them or not. The Greek referendum, then, is a vote on the future of the current neoliberal system. Will financial capital and markets continue to govern politics? Or will it be the other way around?

Will the Greek people be able to overcome the fear that global capital might punish them in a manner that sets an example for other nations daring to think of moving in a similar direction? Do they trust themselves enough to realise that by rejecting the demands of their creditors they can open the door to the political, social and economic rejuvenation of their country? In a recent speech, Amartya Sen has described the package creditors are trying to force down Greek throats as ‘antibiotics with rat poison’:

An analogy can help to make the point clearer: it is as if a person had asked for an antibiotic for his fever, and been given a mixed tablet with antibiotic and rat poison. You cannot have the antibiotic without also having the rat poison. We were in effect being told that if you want economic reform then you must also have, along with it, economic austerity, although there is absolutely no reason whatsoever why the two must be put together as a chemical compound. For example, having sensible retiring ages, which many European countries do not (a much-needed institutional reform), is not similar to cutting severely the pensions on which the lives of the working poor may depend (a favourite of austeritarians). The compounding of the two – not least in the demands made on Greece – has made it much harder to pursue institutional reforms. And the shrinking of the Greek economy under the influence mainly of austerity has created the most unfavourable circumstances possible for bold institutional reforms.

Many well-respected economists believe that in refusing the terms of the creditors for imposing further austerity Greece will be taking the most appropriate and rational economic decision. A ‘No’ vote, in other words, is the only way that Greece can begin to economically grow again.

It is an unfortunate human failing that fear can be a much stronger instinct than hope in crunch times. But then we also know that when individuals, and peoples, are really pushed to the wall and their dignity is impugned, they are capable of reacting with unthought of courage.

On the 5th of July the Greeks will either make their own history or agree to live within the confines of one that is being written for them. In India, as in the rest of the world, many of us will be waiting for the result of the referendum with a thumping heart, and a secret hope.

Parminder Jeet Singh is with IT for Change, a Bengaluru-based NGO

Tony Jaitly, Administrator Who Helped Steer J&K In Its Most Troubled Years

A civil servant who always placed what he perceived to be the national interest before his own

Ashok Jaitly, former chief secretary of Jammu and Kashmir, speaking at a seminar at TERI in 2007. Photo: AMDA

Ashok (Tony) Jaitly of the 1964 batch of the Indian Administrative Service was among the earliest of the direct recruits to that service to be seconded to the IAS cadre of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. This was at a time when J&K, the only state in India with a constitution of its own, was moving to greater administrative integration with the Indian Union. Those of us that had the good fortune to be assigned to the state looked upon this assignment as a nation-building mission. In that mission our two icons were RK Takkar of the 1962 batch and Tony Jaitly, who was, like many of us, an alumnus of St Stephens’. He had gone from there to acquire a Master’s in Economics and a diploma in Development Studies from Cambridge.

Tony had served as Deputy Commissioner in the frontier district of Poonch during the 1965 war, then in the frontier district of Ladakh, a single district at the time headquartered in Leh, and in the winter capital, Jammu. Young and lithe of physique he brought an unmatched energy and commitment to the service that was admired by his juniors, and we discussed with awe his ability to command respect with a stern glance, something that we in our 20s, catapulted into positions hitherto considered in semi-feudal J&K to have been the preserve of the elderly, aspired to emulate. And it was in no small measure because of the road map charted by Tony that in those halcyon days young IAS officers were associated in the Kashmiri public mind with integrity and a commitment to development. Tony and Jaya (June), his wife at the time, were role models, their home, a cottage beside the MLAs’ hostel, a refuge of calm and astute guidance.

During the Janata Party rule of 1977-80, Tony, on deputation to the Centre, served as PS to then Industries Minister George Fernandes, during which time he succeeded in getting Cadbury’s to establish a juice plant in Sopore, the first multinational to invest in Kashmir. This factory is now a profit-earning asset of the State’s Horticulture Processing and Marketing Corporation, an institution that he had helped set up with World Bank finance. But in Delhi, Tony’s usual dedicated commitment to his work was misconstrued as political loyalty and his career suffered. Nevertheless, in those years of his being sidelined, his courage never flagged. On leave in Delhi in 1984, and witness to the tragedy that beset the Sikh community, he gave refuge to whom he could, was part of the Nagrik Ekta Manch, and later testified before the Nanavati Commission.

The real challenge was to come with the rise of militancy in J&K. When insurgency broke out in the state at the end of the 1980s, Tony’s support for officers unjustly victimised in the initial years of Governor’s rule earned him the Governor’s ire. He was transferred out of the state, where he had been serving under the Farooq Abdullah government, only to return briefly as Advisor to the Governor under Governor Krishna Rao. I was Commissioner, Kashmir, and staying in the neighbouring house in Gupkar Road at the time. We would exchange information from our adjoining terraces. Tony was concerned with the collapse of the school system. Finally, he was Chief Secretary under the National Conference government elected to power in 1996.

With the restoration of popular government, he was to remain Chief Secretary till his retirement in 2002. And his was the leading role, first in keeping the government running in the face of violence and then in ushering the by now troubled state and its shattered administration back to a semblance of peace and normalcy. This was not an easy task, and in engaging with it he lost the support of many friends. But today, when one looks upon J&K and the problems that it confronts, little different to the problems that confront other states, one needs to recall the contribution of this civil servant who always placed what he perceived to be the national interest before his own.

After retirement, he spent time as director of the water resources division at The Energy and Resources Institute. His passing relatively young will be a loss not only to his family including his wife Sabina, daughter danseuse Aditi and lawyer son Akshay, and his former wife Jaya, who continued to be a friend, and to his vast circle of friends and admirers, but to the nation and the passing of an unsung pillar to a generation whose passion for its integrity it might not see again.

Playing Musical Chairs with Lutyens Bungalows

With the Congress and BJP trading charges over selective enforcement of official housing rules, it is now up to the High Court to adjudicate the matter

Former Civil Aviation minister and RLD leader Ajit Singh's belongings being carried out after he was evicted from his bungalow in Lutyens' Delhi. PTI photo.

END OF THE RUNWAY: Former Civil Aviation minister and RLD leader Ajit Singh’s belongings being carried out after he was evicted from his bungalow in Lutyens’ Delhi. PTI photo.

New Delhi: There’s a story a well-known city sociologist likes to tell about the sense of entitlement most netas have about the Lutyens’ Bungalow Zone, the central core of the capital that houses the Indian nomenklatura. A student of his, son of a second-generation politician whose political base is in Uttar Pradesh, once said he was going to be spending the summer vacation in his “ancestral home.” Asked whether this was in UP, he responded, somewhat surprised, “No, it’s in central Delhi.”

Having evicted nearly 460 people from the Lutyens Bungalow Zone in its first year in office, the Narendra Modi government may have created a record of sorts. But it has also come in for some severe criticism from opposition parties. The opposition is accusing the NDA government of a vendetta and of double standards – hounding them for supposed violations of official housing norms, while their own senior leaders flout the same rules.

The Delhi High Court will be hearing a petition on July 2^nd, filed by two former Congress Cabinet Ministers, Ambika Soni and Kumari Selja, against the Centre’s move to evict them. Soni and Selja had been served eviction notices by the Directorate of Estates on May 25, asking them to vacate their bungalows by June 10. Soni occupies 22 Akbar Road while Selja stays at 7 Moti Lal Nehru Marg. The court has issued notices to the Central Government, Directorate of Estate and the Rajya Sabha Secretariat and stayed the eviction of the two ministers.

KTS Tulsi, appearing for Soni and Selja, accused the ruling BJP government of “mala fide intention against members of opposition” in asking them to shift from Type VIII accommodation – the largest general size of official bungalow available – to Type VII. He claimed that these bungalows were allotted to the two Congress MPs from the Rajya Sabha housing pool and they were entitled to stay in them till a month after their term expires, which is four years from now.

The Modi government insists the two former ministers are only entitled to Type VII accommodation; and that they need to move as Type VIII accommodation is in short supply and is required for four Union ministers as per their entitlement.

A week ago, Rural Development Minister Chaudhary Birender Singh, who has been allotted Soni’s 22 Akbar Road bungalow but is still waiting for her to move out, publicly complained that despite being a cabinet minister for more than seven months, he has not had proper accommodation all this while. “Roti, kapda aur makaan are essential requirements and if all three are assured to a person then his efficiency will definitely increase,” he had said at a housing conference.

Congress leaders, however, allege that the high-handed approach of the Modi government and in particular Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu went against the spirit of democratic coexistence and accommodation.

Talking to The Wire, former Union Housing Minister and senior Congress leader Ajay Maken said: “We had allowed Naidu himself to continue staying on in the bungalow he had been allotted during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government for many years after the UPA government had come to power in 2004. Similarly, I recall former Speaker Najma Heptulla being allowed to stay on in her bungalow for several years. We never had any vindictiveness in our approach.”

Maken said the BJP Government had different standards for its own leaders: “Several of their senior leaders like L.K. Advani (who stays at 30 Prithviraj Road) and Murli Manohar Joshi (6 Raisina Road) continue to occupy bungalows they are not entitled to. Similarly, former Minister Jaswant Singh (15 Teen Murti Lane) who fought as a BJP rebel but lost and is in a coma, is still in possession of a big bungalow.” Incidentally, all these bungalows are Type VIII.

Rajya Sabha committee’s role

The Urban Development ministry had served an eviction notice to Soni and Selja claiming that they were only entitled to bungalows meant for MPs, but not ones meant for ministers. In the case of Selja, the ministry said the bungalow was transferred from the central pool to the Rajya Sabha pool for allotment to her. As such, it was to return to the general pool after her term as minister ended.

The Ministry’s claim appears to run contrary to the rules stated on page 135 of Chapter 4.18 on Accommodation in Rajya Sabha. On July 31, 2006, the House Committee of the Upper House had adopted guidelines providing for Type VIII accommodation to a “Former Union Cabinet Minister and Former Speaker of Lok Sabha/ Former Governor of a State/Former Chief Minister of a State”.

In October 2013, the Directorate of Estates had clarified: “The primary responsibility for allotment of accommodation to the MPs rests with the House Committee [the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha Secretariat] concerned. As per existing guidelines, former Union Ministers who continue to be sitting MPs are allowed retention of their Ministerial accommodation till they are allotted their entitled category of accommodation from the House Committee concerned. ”

Even former BJP Union Minister, Vijay Goel, while talking to The Wire said the responsibility of allotting a Type VII or Type VIII bungalow vests with the House Committee. However, he said, “there are no hard and fast rules on which one would be allotted. There are guidelines but no strict definitions. Also there are some `minister bungalows’ which are meant for ministers and there are some bungalows which are occupied by ministers out of their own choice. When a new government comes to power, it usually exercises the right to get minister bungalows allotted to its ministers.”

As for senior leaders continuing to occupy bigger bungalows, he said six-time MPs are entitled to Type VII bungalows: “Also in case of very senior leaders, most often relaxations are permitted by the House Committee.”

In the case of MPs too, he said the allotment procedure is flexible: “The size and type of accommodation allotted also depends on the requirement. “For example in case a film star gets elected, a bigger bungalow or flat with a lawn is allotted since there are more visitors. Likewise MPs from Delhi get bigger accommodation because more residents visit them each day.”

In a 2014 affidavit, the Centre had submitted that there were 126 Type-VIII bungalows in the general pool while there were more in different pools such as Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, Supreme Court, High Court and Defence. The government had also submitted that BJP president Amit Shah had also been allotted a Type VIII bungalow at 11 Akbar Road as he now headed the country’s leading political party.

An old tussle

This is not the first time that the issue of allotment of bungalows by the BJP government has gone to court. The Supreme Court had last year taken suo motu cognizance of a letter which had alleged large-scale misuse of discretionary power in the allotment of government bungalows to undeserving persons. However, after the government submitted its response in the form of a detailed list of allottees, the court had averred, “we cannot say that there was indiscretion in the exercise”.

Solicitor General Ranjit Kumar had then claimed that the Centre had achieved a major feat by getting 363 of the 374 houses allotted to MPs who were defeated in the last general elections vacated. Since then, the number of houses vacated has increased to 460. While 44 left soon after they received vacation notices, the Directorate of Estates had to issue nearly 380 eviction notices against the remaining persons. Of these, 37 had to be forcibly evicted. In some instances, as in the case of former Prime Minister Charan Singh’s son and former Union Minister, Ajit Singh of the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), the process of eviction was action-packed, with the Directorate of Estates staff actually throwing the goods of the occupants out in the lawns. The eviction of the RLD leader from 12 Tughlaq Road, a bungalow he wanted converted into a memorial for his father Charan Singh as it had been with the family for 36 years, was also marked by a clash between the police and his supporters. In the case of former Prime Minister Chandrasekhar’s son, Neeraj Shekhar, too, force had to be used to evict him from his 3 South Avenue Lane bungalow as he refused to vacate despite eviction notices.

However, the rule has not been uniformly applied. As Congress MP Sushmita Dev said: “Following the rulebook was good but how would Mr Naidu now explain his 10-year-stay in a bungalow he was not entitled to?”

Get Wired 30/6: Tawde in Scam, Lack of Bulletproof Vests, Priyanka’s Land Deal, and More

Enforcement Directorate officials sent to Singapore on Lalit Modi’s trail

Sushma Swaraj and Lalit Modi at a cricket match in 2010. Credit: PTI Photo

The government on Monday sent Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials to Singapore to expedite the letter rogatory (LR) the agency had sent to the country earlier in the day. This is the first major step against former IPL chief the fugitive Lalit Modi since the controversy involving Modi, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan CM Vasundhara Raje broke out. The ED sent two LRs to Singapore and Mauritius on Monday under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The LRs pertained to the investigation into a deal between Sony’s Singapore based subsidiary Multi Screen Media and World Sports Group, signed by Modi, the LR asks for the banking transactions of both MSM and WSG to investigate their links with Modi.

Maharashtra Education Minister Vinod Tawde facing accusations of irregularities in awarding contract

Vinod Tawde. Source: YouTube Screengrab

The finance department has sought a detailed probe into allegations of irregularities in a Rs.191 crore contract awarded by Tawde’s School Education Department without e-tendering. The news broke just days after another Minister in the Maharashtra government, Pankaja Munde, was accused of corruption in awarding a contract worth Rs 206 crore. The current case pertains to the supply of fire extinguishers to 62,105 zila parishad schools in Maharashtra. Following the government’s order, the contract was awarded to Thane based Reliable Fire Engineers on February 27. The finance department’s approval was not taken before signing the rate contract.

UNICEF report indicates a drop in immunization cover in Maharashtra, Gujarat

A survey conducted by United Nations Children’s Fund has thrown up some uncomfortable statistics for the government indicating a drop in the immunization cover in 5 States. The data from the Rapid Survey of Children conducted during 2012-2013 was submitted to the Women and Child Development Ministry which has refused to accept it, questioning the very basis of the survey. This comes amid whispers that the reason behind the government refusal to accept the report maybe the fact that one of the state in which a dip in immunization cover was recorded is the then-Modi ruled Gujarat. The Ministry maintained that the reason for the refusal to the survey was the lack of clarity in the methods used for the survey, what the basis of the survey was and who commissioned the survey.

Turmoil in Assam over National Register of Citizens

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi. Credit: PTI Photo

The National Register of Citizens based on Independent India’s first census of 1951 is being updated to make it a reference point for checking an individual’s citizenship status. The updating is based on the legacy data comprising two documents-the 1951 NRC and electoral rolls up to the midnight of March 24, 1971. People figuring in these lists and their descendants with proof of linkage are eligible for inclusion, apart from those possessing any or all of 12 sets of citizenship documents like passport, birth certificate. The exercise being conducted by the Assam Government under the guidance of the Registrar General of India has drawn in criticism from various quarters post a statement by CM Tarun Gogoi proposing that the NRC be updated on the basis of latest electoral rolls. The reason for the criticism being that such a revision will allow Bangladeshi immigrants to be considered citizens leading to resentment among indigenous groups.

TAPI pipeline construction set to begin in December

Work on the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline is expected to begin in December, according to a statement given by Turkmenistan’s ambassador to India Prakhat H. Durdyev on Monday. In an event organized by the Ananta Apsen Centre on India-Central Asia relations the ambassador also informed those assembled of the interest expressed by countries like Nepal and Bangladesh in joining the project. The comments come ahead of PM Modi’s week-long visit to Central Asian Republics beginning on the 6th of July.

ILO arm protests against government interference

The labour wing of International Labour Organisation (ILO) raised concerns over the Center’s move to restrict outsiders in trade unions. In a statement released on Monday by the desk officer for the Asia and the Pacific region for the ILO Raghwan, it was asserted that the ILO convention allows Trade Unions to decide their structure and the government’s role is that of a facilitator. The Industrial Relations Bill states that only individuals engaged in an industry can become office bearers of a trade union in the formal sector and only two outsiders can become office-bearers in the unorganized sector. The government maintains that the move is aimed at ensuring that the trade unions are a true reflection of the workers and that it is aimed at preventing the politicization of trade unions.

Government considers legal services’ liberalization

Outgoing Commerce Secretary Rajeev Kher has stated that a committee of secretaries of the government is looking into the matter of allowing, in a phased manner, foreign legal companies to practice in the country. The secretary went on to state that the move is being considered to introduce competition in the sector but there are no plans to open litigation to foreign companies. The government was in talks with the Bar Council of India and the Society of Indian Law Firms, both representative bodies of the country’s legal sector, and according to the secretary both have agreed to the move.

Armed Forces short on bulletproof vests

Soldiers of the Indian Army during a practice drill. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Indian Army is short on bulletproof vests by about 1.86 lacs even though it was cleared by the Defence Acquisition Council way back in October 2009. The army is yet to get lightweight modular jackets almost a decade after it first demanded them, these jackets coupled with ballistic helmets protect the head, neck, chest, groin and sides of soldiers. The Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had last year announced the emergency procurement of 50,000 new jackets, but according to government sources it is set to take another six months at least.

Information Commission orders the release of information on Priyanka Gandhi’s land deal

A full bench of the Himachal Pradesh State Information Commission on Monday directed the Shimla ASM to release information relating to the Priyanka Gandhi land deal within 10 days. The RTI petition seeking information on the land deal filed by RTI activist Dev Ashish Bhattacharya was contested citing security concerns. The commission has also issued notice of penalty for delay and fixed July 23 as next date of hearing.

Report on net neutrality recommends disallowing zero rating plans

Who will pay for the traffic? Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Department of Telecom’s (DoT) report on net neutrality has apparently recommended disallowing the zero rating plans of telcos. The report has further recommended that the government ban throttling and any sort of prioritization of Internet traffic. The report along with the telecom regulator’s recommendation will form the basis of the government’s policy on net neutrality. Net neutrality is a concept that guarantees consumers equal access to all data, apps and services on Internet with no discrimination based on tariff or speed.

In Kerala bypoll, a Boost for Chandy, and for BJP too

The Congress candidate won but both the UDF and LDF have seen their vote share erode as the BJP makes spectacular gains

File photo of Kerala Chief Minister Oomen Chandy. PTI Photo by Shahbaz Khan

Thiruvananthapuram: The Bharatiya Janata Party appears to be emerging as a force to reckon with in Kerala – a state it has yet to win an Assembly or Lok Sabha seat in – garnering 34,145 votes in the by-election to the Aruvikkara Assembly constituency, the result of which was announced on Tuesday.

The Congress candidate K.S. Sabarinath, contesting under the banner of the United Democratic Front (UDF), retained the seat for the front polling, 56,448 votes, while M. Vijayamukar of the CIPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) came second with 46,320 votes.

The by-poll was dubbed a referendum on the last four years of the UDF government led by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy. The victory of the Congress candidate, son of former Assembly Speaker G. Karthikeyan, whose death in March this year had led to the by-poll, is thus a personal victory for the CM.

The most significant aspect of the result, however, is the progress registered by the BJP in this constituency since the last Assembly election four years ago and the Lok Sabha election a year ago. In the 2011 Assembly election, it had won only around 7,000 votes, while in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections it polled around 15,000 votes in the relevant segment (which falls under the Attingal Lok Sabha constituency). Thus, party candidate O. Rajagopal’s performance this time is nothing short of spectacular.

The UDF’s vote share came down from 48.78 per cent to 39.6 between 2011 and 2015 and the LDF’s from 39.61 per cent to 32.50 per cent. The BJP’s vote share, however, increased dramatically from 6.61 per cent to 23.96 per cent. Both coalitions have clearly come in for serious vote erosion to the benefit of the BJP.

“The result shows we are emerging as the single largest party in the state,” claimed BJP State president V. Muralidharan, “because we contest the election alone, while both the UDF and the LDF are multi-party coalitions. He said Rajagopal’s candidature too had mattered.

The UDF has weathered controversy after controversy during the past four years and there is even a group within the party wishing for a leadership change. A strengthened Chandy, however, said the result had exposed the hollowness of all the graft charges the LDF had been levelling against his government.

The CPI(M) leadership dismissed the setback as a development that was not indicative of the mood of the electorate in the state as a whole. Party State secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan said “anti-government votes had split”, facilitating a UDF victory.

Kerala will go in for local body elections later this year and Assembly elections are due in May 2016. The by-poll result strengthen’s the Chief Minister’s position within the UDF and makes him the favourite to lead the UDF in the next Assembly elections. It also throws up new worries to the LDF.

SpaceX Rocket Blows Up but Let’s Remember that #SpaceIsHard

It’s not all-or-nothing each time people try to launch a rocket – and accidents will happen because of the tremendous complexity

“… it’s not all or nothing. We must get to orbit eventually, and we will. It might take us one, two or three more tries, but we will. We will make it work.” Elon Musk said this in a now-famous interview to Wired in 2008 when questioned about what the future of private spaceflight looked like after SpaceX had failed three times in a row trying to launch its Falcon 1 rocket. At the close, Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, asserted, “As God is my bloody witness, I’m hell-bent on making it work.”

Fast forward to June 28, 2015, at Cape Canaveral, Florida, 1950 IST. There’s a nebulaic cloud of white-grey smoke hanging in the sky, the signature of a Falcon 9 rocket that disintegrated minutes after takeoff. @SpaceX’s Twitter feed is MIA while other handles are bustling with activity. News trickles in that an “overpressurization” event occurred in the rocket’s second stage, a liquid-oxygen fueled motor. A tang of resolve hangs in conversations about the mishap – a steely reminder that #SpaceIsHard.

In October 2014, an Antares rocket exploded moments after lifting off, crashing down to leave the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia, unusable for months. In April 2015, a Progress 59 cargo module launched by the Russian space agency’s Soyuz 2-1A rocket spun wildly out of control and fell back toward Earth – rather was incinerated in the atmosphere.

All three missions – Orbital’s, Roscosmos’s and SpaceX’s – were resupply missions to the International Space Station. All three missions together destroyed food and clothing for the ISS crew, propellants, 30 small satellites, spare parts for maintenance and repairs, a water filtration system and a docking port – at least. The result is that NASA’s six-month buffer of surplus resources on the ISS has now been cut back to four. The next resupply mission will be by Roscosmos on July 3, followed by a Japanese mission in August.

But nobody is going to blame any of these agencies too much – rather, they shouldn’t. Although hundreds of rockets are successfully launched every year, what’s invisible on TV is the miracle of millions of engineering-hours and tens of thousands of components coming together in each seamless launch. And like Musk said back in 2008, it’s not all-or-nothing each time people try to launch a rocket. Accidents will happen because of the tremendous complexity.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch was the third attempt in six months to reuse the rocket’s first-stage. It’s an ingenious idea: to have the first-stage robotically manoeuvre itself onto a barge, floated off Wallops Island, after performing its duties. Had the attempt succeeded, SpaceX would’ve created history. Being able to reuse such an important part of the rocket reduces launch costs – possible by a factor of hundred, Musk has claimed.

Broad outlay of how SpaceX’s attempt to recover Falcon’s first-stage will work. Credit: SpaceX

In September 2013, the first stage changed direction, reentered Earth’s atmosphere and made a controlled descent – but landed too hard in the water. A second attempt in April 2014 played out a similar narrative, with the stage getting broken up in hard seas. Then, in January 2015, an attempt to land the stage on the barge – called the autonomous spaceport drone ship – was partially successful. The stage guided itself toward the barge in an upright position but eventually came down too hard. Finally, on June 28, a yet-unknown glitch blew up the whole rocket 2.5 minutes after launch.

The Falcon 9’s ultimate goal is to ferry astronauts into space. After retiring its Space Shuttle fleet in 2011, NASA had no vehicles to send American astronauts into space from American soil, and currently coughs up $70 million to Roscosmos for each seat. As remedy, it awarded contracts in September 2014 to SpaceX and Boeing to build human-rated rockets fulfilling the associated and stringent criteria. The vehicles have until 2017 to be ready. So in a way, it’s good that these accidents are happening now while the missions are uncrewed (and the ISS is under no real threat of running out of supplies).

Cause still unknown after several thousand engineering-hours of review. Now parsing data with a hex editor to recover final milliseconds.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 29, 2015

June 28 was also Musk’s 44th birthday. On behalf of humankind, and in thanks to his ambitions and perseverance, someone buy the man a drink.

It’s Déjà Vu All Over Again

The transformation of the NDA government from a harbinger of purposive leadership into the gang that couldn’t shoot straight is one of the fastest rides downhill in Indian politics.

LIMITS TO SPIN AND SILENCE: Richard Nixon (left), Narendra Modi (right)

The transformation of the NDA government from a harbinger of purposive leadership into the gang that couldn’t shoot straight is one of the fastest rides downhill in Indian politics. Not even the worst critics of Narendra Modi expected such a precipitous fall. Its crisis management has been instinctive rather than considered. First dismissing stories about the transgressions of various government ministers as trivial and then trying to brazen it out are sure signs of a rattled leadership. Ministers, party leaders, RSS workers, all have been trotted out to defend the government that nonetheless has become the butt of ridicule in the media.

Watching events unfold, I am reminded of the Watergate crisis that engulfed the Nixon administration. On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested trying to plant listening devices in the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex in the heart of Washington DC. As the press picked up on the story, Nixon and his aides pooh-poohed it as coverage of a “third-rate burglary.” But the story persisted and grew bigger, revealing evidence of the involvement of top White House aides in an attempted cover up. As events spiraled, it became clear that the Nixon administration had indulged in criminal attempts to influence the outcome of the impending presidential election in November 1972. The rest is history.

The way Nixon and his aides handled the Watergate crisis is instructive as we try to understand the manner in which Modi and unknown aides have dealt with recent media controversies involving senior members of his government and party. Nixon debunked the Watergate burglary coverage as not really worthy of his attention, busy as he was with his re-election campaign and the big issues of world peace. Next step was an elaborate cover up that stretched across the administration from the White House to the Department of Justice to the CIA and the FBI to Nixon’s Republican cronies. Finally, Nixon and his aides were compelled to respond. Even then, they hedged, releasing bits of information…morsels of truth, while withholding damaging material to ensure “plausible deniability.”

This “limited hangout” defence was instinctive, a play by play response and clearly not a well thought out strategy. The assumption seemed to be that it would disappear after the election, which Nixon was widely predicted to win. The Viet Nam war and the protests against it had polarized the electorate. Nixon and his aides believed this would work to their advantage and it did. Nixon won in a landslide.

At the root of this defence was the conviction that the electoral victory would overwhelm the crisis. Nixon believed he could make Watergate disappear once he became president because it was mainly the adversarial press that was responsible for the problem. His vice president, Spiro Agnew, famously coined the phrase: nattering nabobs of negativism. Nixon always held a very dim view of the press. This was evident as far back as 1962 when he blamed his loss in the California gubernatorial election on the press and told a large assemblage of reporters in Los Angeles, “You don’t have Richard Nixon to kick around any more.” His distrust of the media was matched by his visceral hatred for the liberal East Coast establishment exemplified by the Kennedy family; he lost the presidency to John Kennedy in 1960 by a very small margin.

This divisive tendency was carried over into his subsequent presidential campaigns in 1968 and 1972. In the decade from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, America became visibly polarized: flag-waving nationalists and social conservatives on the right; liberals, the academy and a rainbow coalition of radicals, feminists and alternative lifestyle advocates on the left. The polarization was manifest in the popular culture of music, television shows, theatre, dance and films. After Nixon’s resignation in 1974 and the ignominious exit from Viet Nam in 1975, bridges began to come up over the troubled waters.

There are striking similarities between America then and India. Like Nixon, Modi seems to believe in the supremacy of an electoral victory over all matters of law and propriety; he succeeded in polarizing society wherein the “silent majority” of traditional Hindus and the muscular Hindutva minority comprise his mandate and his political strength. He has also made it his mission to spread hatred towards the secular, liberal and westernized segments of society. His distrust for and derision of the media is easily ascertained by a search on YouTube.

In the end, Modi’s assumption is that with an unassailable majority in Parliament, he can afford to ignore the swirling controversies. The “limited hangout” defence comes easy to him. He has used it in Gujarat: instead of answering for the massacre of hundreds of Muslims in 2002, he polarised the state and made it about Gujarati pride and then segued to good governance.

Modi commands an unshakable majority in Parliament but with just 31 per cent of the vote. He will have to answer to the 69 per cent for the transgressions of his minions and to the chunk of the 31 per cent that voted for his promise of development and good governance he made on the campaign trail. There will be more disclosures, more fires to put out: a Pankaja Munde here, a Smriti Irani there; a Rohini Salian, an L K Advani, a Yashwant Sinha…this is just the beginning.

Postscript: The “limited hangout” defence failed. On August 9, 1974, President Richard Milhous Nixon became the first president in the history of the United States to resign. Several of his aides went on to serve jail sentences

Rajiv Desai is Chairman and CEO, Comma Consulting, a public affairs consulting firm. He was also a member of the media advisory board of the Indian National Congress

Sanskrit Needs New Study, and Students, Not a Joint Secretary in the MEA

Make Sanskrit available to the world not as a disinfectant but a great new energiser of the human intellect

External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj meets Princess of Thailand, Maha Chakri Sirindhorn in Bangkok on Sunday. PTI Photo

There are moments when the eye disbelieves what it sees or reads and the mind says ‘You are dreaming’. There are also moments when one doubles up, cringing in embarrassment as the mind says ‘This has to be a spoof, not real…’

That is precisely what I felt reading the text of a speech given in Bangkok by our External Affairs Minister on June 28 2015.

The occasion for the speech was the 16^th International Sanskrit Conference, the host being Thailand’s phenomenally learned Sanskritist, Her Royal Highness, the Princess Maha Chakri. Present in the hall were scholars from across the world, versed in Sanskrit’s mineral-rich seafloor of intellectual diversity – wisdom, satire, humour, piety, irreverence, romance, erotica, gnosticism, agnosticism, in prose and verse rhymed and un-rhymed, metred in tightly-tied feet as also footloose and fancy free.

But our minister was speaking from a text doubtless given to her by the punditry of official speech-writers. And she spoke to a script not about Sanskrit’s many-splendoured fascinations but its role as the lingua indica.

Extraordinary assertion

From the divine to the bovine, everything was envisaged by her as flowing from Sanskrit. “The language of Vedanta”, she declared, “is Sanskrit”. Now this is an extraordinary assertion because Vedanta is not a book but a school of philosophy, not a text but a tradition that encompasses several propositions scattered over the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita. The language of the Vedas is Sanskrit, as it is of the Upanishads. But to call it the language of Vedanta is akin to calling Hebrew the language of Christianity or Pali the language of Buddhism, Arabic the language of Islam, Punjabi the language of Sikhism. But I did not at that stage of the speech want to quibble.Let us hear her more fully, I thought and went on to find her saying “ the language of Yoga is Sanskrit. The language of Ayurveda is Sanskrit. The language of Indian Mathematics is Sanskrit. The language of Dramaturgy is Sanskrit. The language of the Bhagavad Gita is Sanskrit. The language of ancient Indian Architecture, Sculpture, Agriculture, Chemistry, Astronomy, Veterinary, Economics, Political Science, and other fields of knowledge is Sanskrit”.

There was no alternative now but to wish Sushmaji had spoken extempore in her flawless Hindi, making eminent sense from her own understanding of Sanskrit’s role, rather than adhering to what is now clearly state policy, the policy that seeks to make India a secular nation de jure , into a Hindu Rashtra, de facto. Changing de jure statuses is complicated. The process can lead to the ‘other side’ organising legal opposition to the changes. Why mess with the written word which no one reads when many short-cuts are available de facto ?

De factoism is a great ism. It works better than any written law. Let Gandhi be Rashtrapita, Veer Savarkar is our Rashtraguru; let the Constitution of India be a political guidebook, the Bhagavad Gita is our theological guide; let the Supreme Court interpret laws, the Supreme Count – majority-rule – will implement them. What does it matter if the Asokan lions are already on our national emblem? We will depose the tiger from his place as India’s national animal and bring in the lion – the Gir lion – in his place. Sanskrit has works that question, with rigour and effect, religious belief? We will make it the ‘language of the gods’ for we are little gods ourselves.

De factoism is a great realism.

There is no chance that our minister would have been given, as preparation for the conference, the remarkable speech of the late Professor Hiren Mukherjee on ‘The Glory of Sanskrit And Its Relevance To Our Life Today’. A more erudite work on the subject than Hirenbabu’s cannot be expected or received from any pandit of ancient lore. Nor one with a more critically contemporary ring to it.

Purveyor of religion

Hirenbabu quotes Vidura in that speech: apriyasya cha satyasya, vakta srota cha durlabha (for the unpleasing and the truthful, speakers as well as listeners are scarce). And the equally timeless: puranamityena na sadhu sarvam (whatever is old is not, for that reason alone, necessarily right).

Citing the idyllic visions of our ancient texts, he drew attention in that address to the deviations from the ideal. And gave time-honoured descriptions of some current-day types such as dharma-vanijyaka (purveyor of religion).

We have to be wary of dharma-vanijyakas, mantled by power, who would like to, as quietly but as swiftly as they can, reverse engineer the Republic’s biometrics.

We may remind them that theirs is not the first such attempt. And is bound to fail as did the earlier ones. The first such started, in fact, in the Constituent Assembly itself. Meeting on 17 September 1949, the Constituent Assembly took up Dr. Ambedkar’s draft with Article 1 Clause (1) reading ‘India, that is Bharat shall be a Union of States.’ And so, the Preamble apart, the new Constitution of India in its first English draft was to start with the word ‘India’. H V Kamath moved an amendment re-drafting the opening words of Article 1 clause (1) to read “Bharat, or in the English language, India.” Supporting Kamath’s amendment , Seth Govind Das said Bharat as a name that could be traced to the most ancient literatures of India,was the only name befitting the history and culture of the country. Referring to the antiquity of ‘Bharat’, he quoted the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Brahmanas, the Bhisma Parva of the Mahabharata, the Vishnu Purana and the Brahma Purana.

This could have been part of Sushma-ji’s background briefs for Bangkok.

Moving to less ancient times, Seth Govind Das said Hiuen Tsang had referred to the country as ‘Bharat’. For him there was no doubt that the time had come for ‘India’ to become ‘Bharat’ once again.

Then came the turn of the erudite Pandit Kamalapati Tripathi of Varanasi to speak. Turning to the chair, Tripathiji said in chaste Hindi, “Sir, I am enamoured of the historic name – ‘Bharat’”. He said, “The Gods have been remembering the name of this country in the heavens…” In fact, “The gods have a keen desire to be born in the sacred land of Bharat.” As pious as he was learned, Tripathiji’s evocations were fervent. He referred to Sri Rama ‘twanging the chord of the bow’ which ‘sent echoes through the Himalayas, the seas and the heavens’. At this point, a member rose. It was Dr. B R Ambedkar himself. ‘Is all this necessary, Sir?’ he asked the Chair. Tripathiji tried justifying his argument. Dr. Ambedkar interrupted tersely, ‘There is a lot of work to be done.’

Like, let us assume, Sushmaji, Kamalapatiji was a Sanskritist. But he was also a pragmatic Congressman – the two attributes being proverbially inter-changeable. The pragmatist in Tripathiji now took over and in a spirit of admirable accommodation he congratulated Dr. Ambedkar for having brought ‘Bharat’ into the formulation at all, albeit after ‘English’. The amendment proposed by H V Kamath and backed by Seth Govind Das and Kamlapatiji putting ‘Bharat’ before ‘India’ was put to vote by Rajendra Prasad. The Assembly divided by a show of hands. The amendment was defeated, rather narrowly: 38 supporting Kamath, 51 supporting Dr. Ambedkar’s formulation. A difference of 13 hands gave us ‘India, that is Bharat’, rather than ‘Bharat, that is India’.

That is the India that is now once again, de facto rather than de jure, up for an ‘amendment’.

Sushma-ji said in her Bangkok speech that the ICCR was going to give an international Sanskrit Award every year bearing $20,000 to “the scholar who has made significant contribution for Sanskrit” (sic) and Fellowships to “two deserving foreign scholars for conducting research in India in Sanskrit language or literature” (sic). The awardees have to be “foreign” and should be “contributing for Sanskrit”.

Entombing Sanskrit

Indian scholars of Sanskrit are out of the reckoning. Sushma-ji’s remit being what it is, it has to confine itself to “foreigners”. Well, there is more on that street. The Ministry for External affairs, she said, is going to show its seriousness by appointing a Joint Secretary for Sanskrit. The only Joint Secretary in the MEA who will be ‘handling’ a language will be handling not a language that India can use in diplomacy but the language which in Sushma-ji’s words is “sacred by itself, it sanctifies all that come into its contact… purifies the minds of the people and thus sanctifies the whole world.”

I love Sanskrit, I do not worship it. I delight in it , I do not go down on my knees before it. Do not, Sushma-ji, try to embalm or enshrine Sanskrit in a new reliquary. Rather, release its latent energies, enfranchise it, make it available to the people of the world not as a disinfectant but a great new energiser of the human intellect. Dara Shukoh had the Upanishads done into Persian. Scholars the world over have translated Sanskrit works into various languages, are doing so even now. Sanskrit needs new study, fresh analysis, theist and non-theist. It needs students, it does not need a Joint Secretary.

Sushma-ji has left the Emperor Asoka behind. That king wanted his officers and ministers, his Rajukkas and Amatyas, to venture out using only the local prakrits, and he had his edicts carved not in Sanskrit, but in various dialects of Prakrit, such as Magadhi-Brahmi. How un-visionary! He did not found an invincible Bharat. He did not try cleansing, purifying the Great Unwashed. He only established Dhamma. The Way To Doing Right.

His ideological descendants, however, are not that weak. Even if they won out in 1949 by a mere 13 votes, they did prevail. And will, again, over the new dharma-vanijyakas.

Gopalkrishna Gandhi, a former Governor of West Bengal and a former high commissioner to Sri Lanka, is now Distinguished Professor in History and Politics, Ashoka University

Note: A reference to Ashoka’s edicts being carved in “Pali” has been changed to “various dialects of Prakrit, such as Magadhi-Brahmi”, which is sometimes conflated with Pali.

Listen: Pacu, the Aggressive Immigrant Fish

Through interviews, anecdotes and research, Padmaparna Ghosh and Samanth Subramanian bring alive the rich breadth of human imagination and knowledge

A fish with human-like teeth. A close cousin of the piranha. Are Indian waters being invaded by this predatory foreign fish? Are these aquatic immigrants destructive and capable of wrecking their ecological surroundings? Could they destroy the other fish around them? Padmaparna Ghosh and Samanth Subramanian investigate invasive species of fish in this fascinating new episode of The Intersection.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/212603305″ params=”auto_play=true&color=ff00ff” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

This is the latest episode of The Intersection, a fortnightly podcast on Audiomatic. For more such podcasts visit audiomatic.in.

Featured image: A black pacu. Credit: Carnat Joel/Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Outside Recruits to the Hallowed Ministry of External Affairs? Why Not

Lateral entry into the MEA is a good idea, but this must be done in a considered and calibrated manner

The Ministry of External Affairs has said it will soon “advertise posts for academics and private sector candidates to apply for jobs in Policy Planning and Research”.

The debate on expansion of the foreign service is an ongoing one, the popularly held view being that a growth in girth is the road to Nirvana. All the chatter about how small our diplomatic strength is ignores the basic fact that India’s civil service, in general, is small: for instance, a total of around 4500 officers of the Indian Administrative Service serve at the Centre and all the States and Union Territories in the country. In this relative context, it is not a surprise that the Indian Foreign Service is also limited in its numbers.

At the time of formation of the IFS, not all its members were recruited through competitive examination or “direct entry”. In planning for an initial strength of 315 members in 1947, it was recognised by the government that in order to build up the service, it would be necessary at the start to recruit from other services as well as from outside sources. One of the eminent persons recruited to the IFS at the time of inception in 1947, outside the competitive examination, was K.R. Narayanan, who later went on to become President of India.

Through a process of selection based on merit and academic qualifications together with specific domain expertise, the MEA is considering the entry of individuals as consultants who would augment the strength of the Policy Planning and Research (PP&R) Division. The process would be through open advertisement. There are plans on the anvil to enlarge such recruitment in the future and even to embed future inductees in the territorial divisions of the ministry, thus beginning a process of breaking the silos that have essentially made such departments impregnable in the past. The MEA has instituted policy planning “talks” and consultations with 16 countries in order to develop best practices in fostering and outsourcing research and study. Concomitantly, the Indian Council of World Affairs, designated as an institution of national importance by an Act of Parliament in 2001, is also seen as a focal point for pursuing research on behalf of the Ministry with around 20 researchers being identified for this purpose. Expenditure on the policy planning and research activities of the MEA has risen.

Outside inductee numbers rising

Over the last few years, particularly since 2010, the MEA has inducted into its offices at headquarters, deputationists from other central services of government. These are officers of the deputy secretary and director ranks, and their numbers have risen slowly to around 70 at present. Efforts are also underway to reset the ratio of personnel at headquarters to those in missions abroad from around 1:3.5 to 1:2, which should release more persons for work in New Delhi. Younger officers are at the same time being encouraged to interact more systematically and regularly with think tanks and there is recognition of the need to enable researchers in such institutions to have more access to policy-related thinking in the ministry.

Given the prospect of the entry of outside experts into the MEA’s policy planning process, the ministry may find it useful to study the Exchange Agreements, or Intergovernmental Personnel Act under which the United States government permits the “exchange” of people with specialised knowledge to serve a rotation in government. This system allows people from academia or the private sector or state/municipal governments to spend a specified period of time in federal government. This enables the drawing of the best talent from U.S. academia into government.

As a cadre, the IFS has traditionally been resistant to lateral entry, as indeed are the other civil services. A recent article in the Indian Express by an officer in the Prime Minister’s office, Gulzar Natarajan, argued that the mainstream arguments in favour of lateral entry “underestimate the recruitment, functional and operational difficulties associated with lateral entry” and that a generalised system of such entry “runs the risk of degenerating into an uncontrollable ‘spoils’ system.” However, the same writer also conceded that a carefully calibrated expansion in the scope of lateral entry “would be an appropriate strategy to infuse fresh talent into the country’s bureaucratic system.” This would appear to be the approach now being followed in the MEA.

It is also a point to ponder that if more energy and dynamism is sought to be infused into the working of the ministry, then some young officers should be permitted to work outside government – in corporates and nonprofits – for short periods as Natrajan’s article argues, thus enabling important exposure to new ideas and innovative management techniques and providing more energy, talent and dynamism in the functioning of the ministry. Even more importantly, there should be a much more active interchange of officers between the Ministries of External Affairs, Defence, Home Affairs, Finance and Commerce given the critical and interlinked nature of the areas of policy they deal with.

The MEA could also contemplate the possibility of providing for a few of its posts for deputationists to be drawn from state governments as the role of such governments in the execution and determination of foreign policy is becoming more substantive and important. One barrier to this, however, is the fact that the Central Staffing Scheme under which officers from state governments are placed at the Centre does not cover the MEA. A way should, however, be found.

Another idea that can be considered is whether the MEA should consider developing its own think tank, possibly attached to the Foreign Service Institute (which trains new entrants into the IFS) on the lines of what, for example, is seen in the Chinese system. There, the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS) is the think tank of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, conducting research and analysis on a wide range of foreign policy issues of ‘strategic importance’. The CIIS hosts seminars and conferences to discuss new global developments and to advance issue-specific studies. It also runs collaborative research projects with both domestic and foreign scholars on issues of shared interest. Its staff includes senior diplomats, area-study specialists and young scholars who have advanced university degrees in international relations or related disciplines. Such an institution in the Indian context can be a clearing house for new ideas, and a locus for incubating new policy approaches. This could also be a platform where retired diplomats of the IFS could mentor research groups on strategic planning in specific areas of concern to India’s global and regional interests. This should be seen as infusing operational experience and a robust sense of history into the planning process that is essential if new policy alternatives are to be incubated.

Such an institution can also provide the environment in which research activity by non-MEA personnel and operational expertise from the territorial divisions can find their right confluence before new policy options are presented to the ministry’s leadership. Speechwriting, an area, on which neither sufficient time is spent nor new ideas incorporated, should also emanate from such an institutional base. Eloquence of expression is the hallmark of the best foreign offices and our own should not be found lacking in this regard.

Short-term response culture

The organisational culture of foreign offices around the world has tended to favour operational responses to urgent and immediate situations rather than the patient definition of mid- and long-term strategy.

In history, policy planners, including luminaries like George Kennan, were left deeply frustrated by the manner in which the system had little appetite for long-term planning. The pushback from practitioners will always be intensely felt by planners. A respect for learning (including for studying and utilizing the MEA archives more intensively) and development of intellectual inputs (the ‘wonk space’) has to be inculcated in our diplomats from the beginning. Inducting talent from outside the ministry into the policy planning apparatus should aim at providing additional value to strategic and anticipatory thinking on future directions of foreign policy.

Since 2009, the annual intake of officers into the IFS on the basis of the Civil Services Examination has increased substantially and averages a little more than 30. In five to eight years from now, the effects of this increase will be manifest in a larger number of officers at the deputy secretary and director level being deployed with an undoubtedly beneficial impact on work output. Plans to augment this increase in strength with the intake laterally of outside expertise, in a calibrated and nuanced manner, can certainly strengthen capacity within the MEA to provide indispensable and critical inputs on strategic planning and thinking regarding India’s global role for the national security apparatus and the Prime Minister.

All said there is a slow but significant movement towards a more interactive, open-minded approach on augmenting capacity and innovation within the Ministry of External Affairs. It is good that boundaries between the MEA and the world outside are made less rigid so as to permit innovative thinking in various areas, political, economic, developmental and cultural. The door is open, and the future must be fully grasped.

The writer is a former foreign secretary of India