India's ace diplomat agrees to the developed world’s cap on temperature change while trying to negotiate a win-win deal for India within this framework.
The unfamiliar phrase in Chinese turns out to be hand-pulled dan dan noodles with spicy Sichuan pickles and smoked bamboo shoots, which Saran orders and I do just as he does. After all, you don’t have a China expert eating with you everyday (Saran suggests I don’t try the Peking Duck, for example, and points out that the Sichuan food in this restaurant is pretty authentic). So we start off with shrimp dumpling with pickled green chili, which, the waiter assures, is prepared by Chinese chefs who’ve come all the way from their Hyatt hotels in China.
These days Saran is all over the news, having stirred up things in his capacity as India’s lead negotiator on climate change at the Major Economies Forum in Italy last month, where India agreed to a developed-country demand that the developing world (key players are India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico) accept an overall cap of 2°C in the rise in worldwide temperatures. Parts of the Delhi media started beating their chest just in time for US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton’s visit, allowing environment minister Jairam Ramesh to deftly use the feeding frenzy to reverse pressure on the west to abide by its own stated commitments.
It reminded of one of the good old days when Delhi used the press to take on the world, citing Third World discrimination. Clearly, climate change has become just as controversial — and sexy — in 2009 as the nuclear deal had in 2008.
Saran wants to know how India could remain the ‘last man standing’, on the 2°C-rise controversy, if the rest of the developing world, including China, had fallen in line. Moreover, it was never the case that they were disinterested in compromise. “Let the developed world commit to much more ambitious targets, such as a 40 per cent reductions in their emissions by 2020, as per 1990 levels, instead of at 2050 levels as they’re doing now. In turn, the developing world countries are ready to switch to greener technologies and improve energy efficiency that will considerably reduce their own emissions,” Saran says.
The thing about Saran is that as a professional diplomat he knows how important it is to be able to communicate your message to different audiences at the same time. So, while Jairam Ramesh was playing coy with Hillary Clinton, Shyam Saran was reaching out to her own climate-change czar, Todd Stern, in an effort to strike a bilateral deal where the US could be persuaded to transfer green technologies to India, employ carbon credits and enable a win-win situation for both sides. So as they cosied up to each other in each other’s capitals, they were perfectly free to behave as opponents at the UN-sponsored ongoing climate change negotiation that is supposed to culminate at the Copenhagen conference in December.
Saran refuses to talk about any compromises on the table between the developed and the developing world, besides the one that is known to everyone — about transferring between 0.5 and 1 per cent of the developed world’s annual GDP (between $250-$500 billion) to developing nations to help them reduce their own emissions. China, which has already outstripped the US in its total emissions as it builds a new coal-fired plant every six days, is key to the compromise — of course, Saran and the Chinese negotiator Yu Qingtai are friends and work closely together — but Saran knows it’s crucial at this sensitive moment not to demonise any one country.
We’re through with our dim sum starters and embark upon the main course, Saran preferring to plonk the dan dan noodles and the kong pao chicken in the same small bowl instead of moving to another one. It’s like eating out on a side street in Beijing, the noodles wading in the sauce — there’s no need for extra condiments like vinegar or soya sauce on top as Indians like.
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The braised baingan sits on the side as Saran tells me how the media got it wrong at the Nuclear Suppliers Group last year by painting the Chinese as the last holdout between India and great power status. It was never the Chinese, says Saran, but Austria, New Zealand, Switzerland and Ireland. Then India issued a demarche to Beijing the night before the last day of the NSG negotiations. When the Chinese realised the Americans were simultaneously cracking down on the other dissenters in favour of India, Beijing told Delhi it was happy to agree.
The Chinese connection has followed Saran throughout his career, including in his favourite postings in Myanmar and Nepal. (This, apart from the time he was posted in Beijing in the early-mid ’80s, when the ‘opening’ to China was taking place.) He arrived in Yangon in 1997, soon after India had awarded Aung San Suu Kyi the Jawaharlal Nehru prize which meant that no one in the military regime saw him for three months — the equivalent of the Gulag for any diplomat who seeks to push the envelope.
The breakthrough came when Saran sought permission to mount an Indian exhibition in Yangon where, at the centre of the hall, he had two satellite maps of Myanmar taken by the relevant INSAT satellite put up, including a detailed one of Yangon. It seems that all the Myanmarese who came visiting would make a beeline for the maps. The word spread and one of the generals showed up. Taking Saran aside, he asked him in an unbelievable whisper if Indian satellites really had the capability to do this “as the Chinese have told us that this isn’t possible.”
That was the breakthrough that later led to a meeting with Myanmar’s top general Than Shwe during which Saran asked to open an Indian mission in Mandalay. China was the only country which so far had had a mission. Than Shwe agreed — and Delhi exulted — paving the way for much stronger ties between the two countries. It was here in Yangon that Saran indulged his passion for collecting Buddha statues, possibly among the best in Delhi.
Similarly, Nepal, from where he returned to Delhi as foreign secretary, turned from a challenge into a country he grew to love. As foreign secretary, Saran got to know Bhutan and its progressive monarchy well — so much so that he and family flew out for a trekking holiday to Bhutan, four days after he retired in 2006.
Our coffees — capucchino for Saran and filter coffee for me — have arrived by now. We discuss the tiny size of the Indian Foreign Service, how he pushed through its doubling from 600 to 1,200 officers as well as the growing assertiveness of Indians worldwide possibly as a consequence of India’s growing economy.
Saran ends with a little morality story — naturally, about the Chinese — of how they use a mixture of respect and advice to get their way in international realpolitik. I ask him if this is a broad diplomatic hint. Shyam Saran smiles sweetly, gets into his white office car and drives away.