Recently, after an interview recording with a Hindi TV network ended, and the camera was switched off, the interviewer asked me: what happens to all the MoUs and agreements that are signed at summit visits by our leaders — do they produce action? That simple question goes to the very nub of India’s foreign affairs today. The answer is not reassuring; India has tended to be a laggard in acting upon accords, especially when they involve actions by multiple agencies. The issue: can we can install a ‘whole of government’ implementation process?
No Indian prime minister has accomplished as much by way of summit diplomacy as has Narendra Modi in his 20 months in office. For a moment let us put aside the global and neighbourhood peregrinations of a super-active prime minister. Even in terms of incoming international dignitaries to Delhi, we have not seen a time of greater activity, especially in terms of the number and quality of world leaders that have come. One does not know if anyone has kept track of the number of agreements that have been signed at both the outbound journeys of Mr Modi and during the India visits of his counterparts. The total must be around 400. What is the status of the follow-up actions?During one of the four oral history recordings I conducted with former Indian diplomats between 2010 and 2014 (just two have been published, the why of that is another story), one recounted an event from the early 1990s. At a regional conference of Indian ambassadors, he reminded Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao of his visit to a Gulf country a couple of years earlier; not one of the several agreements he had signed had been implemented. Mr Narasimha Rao was visibly upset to hear this; he told the senior PMO officials in attendance that he wanted all agreements to be monitored from the PMO, with a fortnightly action report submitted to him. I had a similar experience with action on a 1994 directive given by Mr Narasimha Rao in Berlin, on MHA’s inaction on visa applications from foreign scholars (Diplomacy at the Cutting Edge, 2015, p. 37). That problem persists even today.
What we need is a system that brings in ministries and departments as motivated actors in their own work domains to do all that they ought to vis-a-vis international accords, in a self-driven, autonomous mode. Is that a bridge too far? In 2015: India and France signed an agreement covering sports medicine, also supporting women’s participation in sports; India and China agreed to produce films as co-productions; an agreement with Canada covers skills development in India; another with Russia involves development of a centre of excellence for heavy engineering design. True, not all agreements are vital: some are recycled, and a few are symbolic or of small consequence (e.g. one some years back on Indian brinjal export). Somewhere a mindset persists that the higher the numbers signed, the more impressive that summit. A deeper reality is that implementing ministries and agencies do not always view the larger context of such functional cooperation.
Some years back an Indian Foreign Secretary told a closed-door meeting: “Implementation remains our weakness”. Some thoughts on this:
First, our PMO, especially in the Modi government, prods ministries to break logjams and move forward, be it on domestic development projects or external engagement. That is showing results; a dynamism is visible in New Delhi’s official corridors that was missing for many years. PM Modi evidently favours tight monitoring by his PMO staff, in the fashion in which he had operated in Gujarat as chief minister for over 12 years. But a top-down, headmaster-with-a-stick approach cannot provide effective governance in our huge federal polity.
Two, the ministry of external affairs (MEA), like all foreign ministries, has an inescapable coordination role — vis-à-vis official agencies of all hues, and with non-state stakeholders too, where relevant. This requires all ministries to shed silo mindsets. It is not enough to blame the MEA. It is not clear if the MEA is as proactive, and committed to building cooperative bridges to its official partners in the required manner and style. Elsewhere, Italy follows the practice of appointing foreign ministry officials as “diplomatic advisers” in all ministries; it seems to work well. In New Delhi, alas, even the posts that exist in ministries such as commerce and finance for “out-placement” of MEA officials are not always filled — in part because Foreign Service officials view such assignments as a kind of exile. Yet, at different times, such officials have played a sterling role in these jobs, and in ad hoc placements in other ministries including defence, industry and petroleum. Now that the MEA has opened its portals to receiving officials from other services and ministries, it is even more vital to send out more to a wide range of key partners, serving as bridge-builders.
Of course, mechanisms exist for resolving inter-ministry issues, when direct effort by the main actors fails — such as the Committee of Secretaries chaired by the Cabinet Secretary. But the challenge is deeper, because delay comes not from active opposition, but rather indifference or even ignorance. The MEA and its official partners need to shift from occasional problem-solving actions, to proactive, continuous inter-ministry collaboration, in implementing decisions of the government, which include agreements with foreign states.
Third, our states are also often key players in agreement implementation. The MEA has recently established a process (i.e. a division, headed by a joint secretary) for collaboration with states, as a permanent mechanism. Another new move: MEA officials have been posted in a few state capitals. This takes a leaf out of the practices of large countries as varied as China and Mexico. But the MEA is unlikely in the foreseeable future to have manpower to cover all 29 Indian states. Why not then train state officials, say at short courses of a few weeks in Delhi, to head such liaison offices? That would give teeth to Mr Modi’s “Cooperative, Competitive Federalism”, and use states more coherently as agents for external cooperation.
Whole-of-government actions are an elusive goal, as many countries have found, far easier said than done. Our current problem on this front is so large that any effort that produces improvement is worthwhile.
