Diplomacy needs a corps

The foreign secretary, Shiv Shankar Menon, is reported to have told a parliamentary standing committee that his ministry is under-staffed. He is also reported to have said: "We are not that efficient or that good. It's really a problem. The strain is telling on us." Mr Menon was only stating the obvious. At a time when India has begun to engage with the world more meaningfully than before, it has the smallest diplomatic corps for any major country, relatively small missions in most countries, and a head office staff level that is particularly inadequate; indeed, the headcount has been shrinking over the years. The external affairs ministry has 4,746 people on its rolls, but the overwhelming majority comprises support staff; even amongst the diplomats, it is not certain how many would meet genuine international quality standards.

That is partly because the foreign service has dropped low on the priorities of those who are selected for government service through the annual public examination. There was a time when you had to be in the top 15 or 20 in the all-India rankings to get into the foreign service; now even the 200th candidate on the merit list stands a fair chance. This is because, compared to other services, the opportunities for illegal gratification are limited in the IFS. Furthermore, the plum postings are not handed out with complete fairness. Given the choice between serving in Harare, Dushanbe, Lima, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, where would you rather be? So it is not just staff strength, there are other issues involved, and it doesn't look as if the government has started down the road to addressing them.

Mr Menon has raised a valid and indeed an urgent concern. He needs to follow through with a proper solution, which would need the following three features: expansion, better focus and lateral entry. Expansion is necessary because Indian diplomacy now has a genuinely bigger footprint, and more ambitious goals; by some estimates, India needs to straightaway double the size of its diplomatic corps. The expanded agenda also calls for more hands and better hands, and people with specific specialisations. You can't get all this from the somewhat archaic examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission, with its emphasis on rote learning of subjects in which examinees know they can score high marks.

In any case, the quality issue fades in the presence of the much larger problem of numerical inadequacy. Diplomats have to be honed over years before they can assume ambassadorial responsibility, so sticking to the UPSC route is no solution. Lateral entry from other professions and career streams (and perhaps from some other branches of the government) is unavoidable if staffing levels have to be raised quickly, and if different skills and disciplines are to be brought to bear. There will be organisational issues relating to assimilation, but these have to be faced and tackled. Indeed, there is a precedent for lateral entry. When the British left in 1947, there was a huge gap in the civil services. Most of it was made up by "emergency recruitment" in the years immediately before and after Independence. People were selected only after an interview and assigned arbitrary seniority on the basis that they would need to serve the government for at least 25 years. Some very good civil servants entered the government through this route. It can be done again, especially when there is a much larger pool of competent people to choose from today.