Dealing with others

Thanks to the plank on which the present UPA government won the election, and the manner in which it has been projecting its pro-poor credentials, public attention has been focused on economic policy.

That is good, but governments have many things to attend to and foreign policy is one of them. So far what has been in evidence is not very reassuring.

External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh is a seasoned war horse but also carries a lot of baggage from the past, as reflected in set attitudes and approaches. This latter could be one reason why the noises emerging from his ministry are not as reassuring as the ones from the finance ministry across the road.

While the latter has, by and large, emphasised policy continuity Mr Natwar Singh, perhaps unintentionally, has signalled the opposite. The prime minister would do well to have a quiet word with him on the virtues of speaking only when necessary. An economy with words goes a long way in calming troubled waters and, when they are calm, not ruffling them.

The prime minister is surely aware of them, but it does no harm to reiterate the three dilemmas he could be called upon to resolve in the weeks to come.

One relates to the external environment; the other to men who have been asked to chart India's course in it. The external environment, when all the fluff is blown away, consists of one primary thing: the all-powerful United States.

The NDA government understood this more clearly than previous governments and, even if there is some truth in the charge that it was altogether too accommodative of the US, no one can say that the policy was not pragmatic.

If he wishes not to embarrass his government, Mr Natwar Singh will have to travel that distance. One way of doing so would be for him to ask his office to evaluate the ways in which India benefited from its foreign policy in the NDA years. The evaluation should include India's policy towards its neighbours, not just Pakistan but all of them.

This leads to the second dilemma that the prime minister could be expected to resolve. Even if his foreign minister takes a dim view of India's foreign policy since 1998, his national security advisor is likely to have the opposite view.

The four books that J N Dixit has written in the last few years certainly lead to that conclusion. No special talent is required to predict that the prime minister will have to deal with conflicting advice.

On occasion, he will have to make hard choices. It would be best if he favours pragmatism over ideology. What works well sometimes doesn't look very good, but who says success must be beautiful as well?

The third dilemma is how to deal with the permanent foreign policy establishment. Both Natwar Singh and J N Dixit have emerged from its bosom, as had Brajesh Mishra (though not Jaswant Singh and Yashwant Sinha).

Unlike their predecessors, they would do well to acknowledge that the Indian Foreign Service is not a happy family and do something about it. To repeat an old adage, a workman is only as good as his tools.