Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh knows her turf
Two days into her new job, Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh must be wondering what all she must do to inject a fresh sense of purpose and direction in the conduct of India's relations with the rest of the world. Ms Singh struck the right note when she said that her immediate priority would be the country's “immediate neighbours”. She must have meant Pakistan and China, and that's where the challenge lies. It's not in her hand to recast relations with these two countries, though. In the first place, Beijing and Islamabad have through some of their recent actions made it difficult for New Delhi to reach out with the warmth and spontaneity that can take the relationship to the next level. Indeed, their conduct has often led to a scaling down of ties, at least at the emotional level. Ms Singh will, therefore, have to perform her task in an environment that offers huge limitations.
The second issue is that much of the diplomacy that India has engaged in with the two neighbours has been at the direct level of the Prime Minister or his chosen advisers. Experts have pointed out that let alone the Foreign Secretary, even the External Affairs Minister has over the last few years begun to play a less than key role in shaping bilateral ties with the two critical nations. The third aspect — and this too appears to have somewhat diluted the importance of the foreign office — is that bilateral relations have come to depend more on trade and economic exchanges than on foreign policy nuances. In other words, the stronger the prospect of business with a country, the more the chances of India's foreign policy tilting in favour of that country. While this phenomenon has taken roots across the world — look at how the US treats China with care and respect despite having serious differences with it at the most fundamental levels and despite being rebuffed by Beijing time and again — New Delhi must remember that economic considerations cannot browbeat national security concerns. This is something on which Ms Singh will have to take a firm position, and not allow her office to be over-ridden by the babble of business.
She has come to the job with enormous experience. Having worked in an era when foreign policy was conducted in a bipolar world with two superpowers and the rest of the nations practically aligning with either of the two, and having also performed in a new and more complicated environment of the present where friends and allies are determined less on ideological grounds and more on pragmatic (read economic) considerations, Ms Singh understands the good and the bad of both the worlds. While it is her job to execute the foreign policy initiatives of the incumbent Government, she can and must set agendas of her own within the limited walls that she will function from. With a tenure of two years, she will in all probability be working with a new Government some months down the line. She has much to look forward to.