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Transforming Indian Foreign Policy: Imperatives, Responses and Consequences

Dr Ian Hall Senior Fellow

Department of International Relations School of International, Political and Strategic Studies

College of Asia and the Pacific Australian National University

Canberra, ACT 0200 Australia

ian.hall@anu.edu.au

Draft – not for citation without permission Abstract Most discussion about rising powers concentrates on the actual and potential consequences for that states place in the world and for international society more generally. Far less discussion concentrates on how that rise transforms the state itself, and particularly how it changes the beliefs, practices and politics of that state. Yet it is clear that rising powers see significant transformations in the ways in which their foreign policies are conceived, implemented, and negotiated. In the latter half of the 1940s, for example, US foreign and security policy underwent a dramatic transformation, with new ideas, new institutions and new political views emerging to meet the challenges America’s elite perceived that country to be facing. As India rises, core beliefs about the purposes of Indian foreign policy are changing, the mechanisms for formulating and prosecuting it are being transformed, and domestic political arrangements concerning it are shifting. This paper analyses these new beliefs, new practices and new politics of foreign policy in India. It argues that India’s foreign policy making nexus – defined as the combination of those beliefs, practices and politics – are being shaped by a struggle between inherited, traditional modes of thought and practice and emerging ideas and perceptions about how rising and putative great powers ought and might behave. It also argues that ‘engagement’ strategies pursued by other states, notably the United States, are helping to drive processes of transformation. It suggests, moreover, that there are signs that the inherited Nehruvian order in foreign and security policy-making, in which its processes are dominated by a small, ideologically homogenous and largely self-perpetuating elite, is beginning to fragment, as new ideas, practices and actors assert themselves. These are evident, the paper argues, in successive reorientations of India foreign policy, first to ‘Look East’, then towards the United States, and latterly to render India an ‘Indo-Pacific’ power, with interests and connections stretching from the Persian Gulf and the East African littoral to the South China Sea and the Western Pacific. The paper outlines these conceptual reorientations, the new practices and institutions that have emerged in response, and the new internal and external players helping to drive change. Words 7326

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Transforming Indian Foreign Policy: Imperatives, Responses and Consequences

Over the past two decades India’s position in world politics has been transformed. It

is now a de facto nuclear weapons state and it has forged a strategic partnership with the

United States. Its relations with East and Southeast Asia have improved, though relations

with China remain testy and competitive. India’s foreign policy-making elite has become

more open to new ideas and theories, most notably to versions of American realism and

liberalism. And India has begun, slowly, to begin to better integrate its economy with its

South Asian neighbours and to settle some disputes with regional states.

What explains these changes? The existing literature tends to account for the

transformation of India’s foreign policy in terms of changed international circumstances and

elite responses to those circumstances (e.g. Mohan 2003; Malone 2011). The collapse of the

Soviet Union, the emergence of a unipolar world and the rise of China are commonly cited as

the major reasons for changes in India’s policies and behaviour. These structural or quasi-

structural system-level pressures place stresses on India’s core foreign policy decision-

makers, so the conventional argument does, and in turn these actors generate new policy

settings or implement new patterns of behaviour.

This article argues that we need a more sophisticated explanation of how India makes

foreign policy. It argues that a focus on structural pressures and the preferences of individual

leaders needs to be supplanted by a more fine-grained account of the various actors and

institutions involved, their interactions, and the changing domestic political context in which

foreign policy is made. To that end, it looks first at the constitutional and institutional setting

of Indian foreign policy-making inherited from the post-colonial, Cold War period. Second, it

explores at the changing beliefs, theories and ‘rationalities’ of India’s foreign policy making

elite. Third, it examines the reforms to the Ministry of External Affairs and other institutions

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made since 1991. Fourth, it turns to the changing political context in which foreign policy is

made in India, with a particular focus on what some have called the looming ‘crisis of

governability’ (Kohli 1990) the rise of the state-level influence on foreign policy actors, and

the complex role of public opinion in elite calculation.

The post-colonial inheritance

The period immediately before and after independence, in 1947, set important

parameters for Indian foreign policy-making. By constitutional design and practical

convention, decision-making became concentrated in a small, civilian elite centred on the

Prime Minister. The Indian Constitution, which came into effect on 26 January 1950, gives

executive powers to the President, as both Head of State and of Government (V, 53(1)), as

well as commander-in-chief of the armed forces (V, 53(2)), but devolves many of these

powers to the Prime Minister (PM) and cabinet. Constitutionally, the Council of Ministers,

headed by the PM, aids and advises the President (V, 74(1)). The federal Union government

is given competency over all matters concerning external relations. The Seventh Schedule

(Art 246) of the Constitution, otherwise known as the ‘Union list’, reserves to the Union

government powers over ‘foreign affairs’ (246(10)), ‘diplomatic, consular and trade

representation’ (246(11)), dealings with the United Nations and international conferences

(246(12 & 13)), the making of treaties and other agreements (246(14)), as well as matters of

‘war and peace’ (246(15)).

Unusually, India’s Constitution also lays out ‘directive principles of state policy’

deemed ‘fundamental in the governance of the country’ and mandates that it ‘shall be the

duty of the State to apply these principles in making laws’ (IV, 37). These principles cover

foreign as well as domestic policy. Thus Article IV, 51 directs the Union government to

‘endeavour’ to:

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(a) promote international peace and security;

(b) maintain just and honourable relations between nations;

(c) foster respect for international law and treaty obligations in the dealings of

organized peoples with one another; and

(d) encourage settlement of international disputes by arbitration.

How far these directives have shaped foreign policy-making in India is a moot point.

In practice, after 1947, foreign policy-making rapidly became centralized in the hands

of the Prime Minister and inner Cabinet, with Parliamentary oversight and influence sharply

curtailed. The sheer stature of India’s first PM, Jawaharlal Nehru, was crucial in this regard:

Nehru had few rivals with equal or greater knowledge of international affairs and he took a

particular interest in foreign policy, excluding others from the space. He set the ideological

tone of Indian foreign policy and held the office of Minister of External Affairs (EAM)

alongside that of PM until he relinquished power in 1964. In the early years, at least, he also

sought to construct the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in something of his own image,

helping to recruit and to interview budding members of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS).

The weakness of the bureaucratic institutions inherited from colonial India aided this

task. The reorganization of colonial government entailed by Government of India Act (1935)

created an External Affairs Department and the nucleus of something akin to a foreign

service, complete with a handful of diplomatic agents abroad, all of them British in origin

(Saksena 1996: 392-393). As independence neared, it was decided to create an Indian Foreign

Service (IFS) to staff a post-colonial foreign ministry and India’s embassies, but most of the

new recruits – some experienced civil servants and some new entrants – had little experience

of diplomacy or foreign policy. Upon independence, the British External Affairs Department

was reconstituted into a Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations, renamed

simply the MEA in 1949. Lacking experienced diplomats, the IFS recruited from other parts

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of government, notably from the colonial Indian Civil Service (ICS), as well as from the

military and other parts of the new nation. Former ICS officers dominated the heights of the

new service, taking up most of high- level official and ambassadorial posts (Saksena 1996:

394). They brought to the new service both the work-ethic and the self-conscious elitism for

which the ICS was renowned and for which the IFS is today equally well-known (Malone

2011: 7-8). And they also brought – according to K. P. Saksena – a culture of secrecy, which

militated against accountability and effective criticism of foreign policy making, whether in

parliament or in the media (Saksena 1996: 395).

Before and after independence, Nehru took a particular interest in the makeup of this

new ministry (Saksena 1996: 398). Indeed he would even interview potential IFS officers –

the memoirs of the former Foreign Secretary Jagat S. Mehta, for instance, recall a particularly

uncomfortable encounter with the soon to be Prime Minister in March 1947 (Mehta 2010:

32). Nehru also took a personal interest in the training and postings of junior as well as senior

diplomats (Saksena 1996: 398). As a result, the Prime Minister was able to influence not

merely the overall policy-settings, but the personnel themselves, promoting those (like the

aristocratic and Cambridge-educated Mehta) whom he perceived to be in his own image and

shaping their careers.

Under Nehru, the strategic direction of foreign policy was set by the Prime Minister

or those in his immediate coterie (Power 1964: 261-262). This small group devised both the

ends of Indian foreign policy, informing parliament of decisions made, rather than consulting

it on matters of substance, and utilising the MEA simply as an instrument rather than an

active participant in policy-making. It took until 1966 – two years after Nehru’s death – for

the MEA to create a Policy Planning Review Division (PPRD) (Prasad 1966: 296; Saksena

1996: 401). Unlike the US State Department’s Policy Planning Staff or indeed the American

National Security Council, however, the Division did not include outside experts from

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academia or think tanks, but was rather staffed by MEA officials. As time went on, according

to Saksena, the work of the PPRD was further undermined by ‘[p]ersonality equations,

ministerial rivalries, lack of teamwork, and lack of appreciated of foreignpolicy [sic]

planning’ (Saksena 1996: 402). As a result, it was sidelined as successive Prime Ministers

asserted their authority to shape the overall ends of policy.

This control has been achieved in two ways. The first is straightforward: many of

Nehru’s successors simply continued the tradition of being both PM and foreign minister.

Since 1964, no fewer than nine PMs have served as their own EAMs at various times, the last

being Manmohan Singh between November 2005 and October 2006. Combining the two

roles concentrates decision-making and counter-balances any forces in cabinet that might try

to influence the articulation or implementation of foreign policy. Of these, only three are truly

consequential in any case: the Defence Minister, Finance Minister, and the Minister of

Overseas Indian Affairs. This last office is a recent creation – the Ministry of Overseas Indian

Affairs (MOIA) was created only in 2004 (originally as the Ministry of Non-Resident Indian

Affairs).

This concentration of decision-making is reflected in the institutional arrangements

for policy advice that have evolved since independence. In theory, the MEA ought to be lead

ministry in providing advice, but in practice this role has been partly usurped by the PM’s

Office (PMO). The PMO encompasses the Cabinet Secretariat, whose officials provide policy

advice and intelligence. India’s external intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing

(RA&W), founded in 1968, comes under its auspices rather than under those of a Ministry,

reputedly to keep parliamentary scrutiny of its activities to a minimum. Within the PMO also

sits the National Security Council (NSC), brought back into being in 1998 by the Atal Bihari

Vajpayee’s Bharatya Janata Party (BJP) led government, and headed by the National Security

Advisor (NSA). As we shall see, the NSC was designed to try to meet the perceived need for

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better coordinated strategic planning and policy implementation. It comprises three different

parts: the Strategic Policy Group, made up of ministers and top officials, the Joint

Intelligence Committee, and the National Security Advisory Board, consisting of retired

officials, serving bureaucrats and intelligence officers, scholars and independent analysts.

The MEA’s ability to provide policy advice and to influence the making of foreign

policy is curtailed by the power of the PMO in a polity in which the PM is very much the

dominant actor, as well as by its own intrinsic institutional and cultural limitations. The MEA

remains very small and – compared to the foreign services of other rising powers – under-

staffed. The elite IFS is rightly prized for its abilities, but it has always tiny compared to its

foreign peers. The IFS comprises only about 700-800 individuals, some at the MEA in New

Delhi and the remainder spread throughout India’s 160-odd embassies and consulates abroad

(MEA 2011). As a consequence it is over-worked and over-stretched. By default, and to the

irritation of some within and some outside the MEA, the IFS leaves much of its strategic

thinking to retired officers while its serving cadres deal with pressing day-to-day matters (see

especially Markey 2009).

Two other institutional actors ought to shape foreign policy making, but rarely do: the

military and parliament. In other democratic and non-democratic governments, one might

expect the military to have some input into the foreign policy-making process. India is

unusual, however, in keeping the armed forces at arms-length from foreign policy. As

Stephen P. Cohen has observed, ‘probably no military of equivalent importance or size has

less influence’ over the shaping of policy at the highest level (Cohen 1988: 114). The chiefs

of the armed forces are not present at the highest councils of government and nor are they

routinely consulted about major foreign or even security policy issues.

The legislative branch of government can in theory have extensive input into foreign

policy making, but in practice, rarely does. Parliament can make resolutions on foreign policy

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issues and thus seek to bind the executive to take particular actions; it can also vote on

appropriations or cuts to budgets for the MEA or other agencies. Article 253 of the Union

List in the Constitution gives Parliament, as Tharoor notes, ‘the exclusive legislative

authority to implement treaties and international agreements’ (Tharoor 2012: 354). But as

Bandyopadhyaya observed back in 1970, ‘the theoretical functions of parliament with regard

to the making of foreign policy have remained largely unfulfilled’ (Bandyopadhyaya 1970:

132). Indian governments are rarely subjected to extensive questioning on foreign policy

issues in the Lok Sabha – Tharoor suggests that only about 5% of questions posed in

Question Time concern such issues (Tharoor 2012: 359). The Consultative Committee of

Parliament for the MEA met rarely under Nehru and his immediate successors; the Standing

Committee on External Affairs generally spends its time meeting and greeting foreign

delegations (Tharoor 2012: 360). Most significantly of all, India’s parliament is rarely given

any opportunity to vote on foreign policy – on either general policy directions or specific

policy initiatives. Bandyopadhyaya points out that no treaty or agreement was put before

parliament for discussion or a vote between 1947 and 1970 (Bandyopadhyaya 1970: 136).

This tendency has persisted since 1970, limiting parliament’s ability effectively to exercise its

constitutional powers in this area. These problems are all compounded, finally, by a general

disinterest in foreign affairs displayed by most members of parliament.

In sum, India’s constitutional arrangements and postcolonial experience concentrated

foreign policy-making in the hands of a few elite actors centred on the PM, with the MEA

very much in a subordinate role, with the military and parliament as very peripheral players.

But, I argue, this situation is changing, as new challenges, theories and practices emerge, with

the result that the foreign policy-making process is being opened up to new influences and

new actors.

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New theories: dilemmas, changing beliefs and rationalities

The concentration of foreign policy-making in the hands of the Prime Ministers and

their associates in the post-colonial period made promoting one particular tradition of thought

and practice straightforward. Arguably, it also stifled the development of alternative modes of

thinking about Indian foreign policy. Under Nehru, his brand of socialist- inflected

internationalism held sway; after Nehru, there was a shift towards a more ‘militant’ version

of his creed, but one that still insisted – at least rhetorically – on nonalignment and

internationalist solidarity, while pushing more aggressively for India’s national interests.

Since 1989, however, new debate have opened up in India about the best ways in

which to think about and conduct international relations. Some have characterised this change

as a straightforward shift from ‘idealism’ to ‘realism’ – a crossing, as C. Raja Mohan

famously argued back in 2003, of the Rubicon (Mohan 2003; cf. Sagar 2009). Some go so far

as to argue that India has completely embraced amoral, interests-driven Realpolitik – albeit in

a ‘veiled’ form (Gilboy and Heginbotham, 2012). Some express concern that Indian foreign

policy is increasingly being shaped by nationalism and even Hindu chauvinism, leading it in

more assertive directions (Chaulia 2002; Ogden 2010). Others maintain that Nehruvian

themes and ‘moralism’ still persist in Indian international thought, especially within the core

foreign policy-making elite, and continue to shape practice (Sikri 2009; cf. Hall 2010). Still

others think that India is now merely a ‘pragmatic’ power, where abstract ideas play a

subordinate role in policy-making and implementation (Malone 2011, 47-53).

These arguments, which sometimes divide foreign policy ideas into quite crude

categories, obscure some significant continuities and some important changes, and indeed

occlude crucial distinctions between principles (which define ends) and the social scientific

theories and managerial ‘rationalities’ (which offer means of achieving those ends) (Bevir

and Rhodes 2010, 136-155). The end of the Cold War, which came as much of a shock to

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India’s elite as to others – did generate a series of responses from Indian politicians, officials

and analysts. Some, when confronted by the new and unprecedented international order,

moved to reaffirm older verities; others set themselves in novel directions. The veteran

scholar M. S. Nayan, Emeritus Professor of International Studies at JNU, lamented the fact

that the loss of the USSR implied a loss of ‘manoeuvrability in the international system’ and

decried American ‘unipolarism’, but reasserted the virtues of nonalignment (Nayan 1993, 144

& 147). He also detected signs that there was a ‘national consensus’ for this continuation of

this policy (Nayan 1993, 149).

Others, however, saw signs that this consensus was eroding and moved to replace

inherited Nehruvian ideas with new ones either derived from other indigenous traditions of

thought or imported from non-Indian sources. Alongside – and sometimes among – the

Nehruvians have long sat groups of Indian realists. They often shared a common diagnosis of

the challenges of international relations and Indian foreign policy, while differing on the

prescription. They agree that much of the world tends to ‘power politics’, but disagreed on

how to advance India’s national interests. For realists like K. C. Pant, Jaswant Singh and K.

Subrahmanyam, Nehru’s version of nonalignment demonstrably failed India in being overly

moralistic and inattentive to interests (Subrahmanyam 1999, x). Moreover, they argue, Nehru

failed to provide India with the kinds of institutions and processes necessary for effective

foreign and security policy-making. This group saw the end of the Cold War as an

opportunity to reshape Indian foreign policy and policy-making processes to better meet the

needs of power politics.

Liberal beliefs have also become more evident in India’s growing middle class since

1991 and are reflected in parts of the media, some think-tanks and elements of the political

class (see Das 2002). In terms of foreign and security policy, liberal thinking posits that

India’s rise would be best managed by governance reforms, especially in terms of the

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accountability and performance management of the public service, and by further market

reforms to the economy. Liberal ideas are evident too, as we shall see, in certain reforms to

the MEA and other ministries, which have sought to use new media to ‘democratise’ foreign

policy-making and increase levels of transparency.

The past two decades have also witnessed the rise of a new kind of realism distinct

from the indigenous tradition. This realism is derived almost wholly from American theories,

especially from post-war classical realism and from latter-day neo-realism. The first,

unsurprisingly, has more of a hold over media commentators and policy-oriented academics

(e.g. Pai 2012 or Pant 2010); the second is more influential among a sector of scholars

working in Indian IR (e.g. Basrur 1994). Both have substantial, if not large, followings in

both universities and outside them.

Alongside these realist and liberal views, two others contend. The first is Hindu

nationalist international thought, which draws on both foreign and local influences (Chaulia

2002; Ogden 2010). The other is what might be described as critical and postcolonial

thinking, which remains highly influential in the Indian intelligentsia, especially at elite

institutions such as Delhi University (DU) and Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), shaping

much theorising about foreign and security policy and international relations more generally

(Behera 2010).

Mainstream ideas about foreign and security – those that I argue inform the political

elite, the MEA, and Establishment experts in universities, think-tanks and the media – blend

both Nehruvian themes and quasi-realist ones. Like Nehru, the mainstream remains

committed to the foundational principles of the UN order, especially a hard conception of

sovereignty, a strict adherence to non-intervention, and an insistence on mutual respect and

non-inference in the internal affairs of other states (Power 1964; cf. Nehru 1961). These

views shaped India’s scepticism about the 1991 Gulf War at the start of the post-Cold War

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period, and informed its criticism of the 2011 Libyan intervention by Western forces towards

the end of the period (Hall forthcoming). But the mainstream has replaced Nehru’s

commitment to ‘nonalignment’ with a harder conception of ‘strategic autonomy’ with realist

overtones (Monsonis 2010). It is this concept which underpins, for example, the Centre for

Policy Research’s (CPR) recent paper, Nonalignment 2.0, which aims to set out the principles

for Indian foreign and security policy (see Khilnani et al. 2012).

In essence, Nonalignment 2.0 calls for ‘bounded pragmatism’. It aims to uphold some

of Nehru’s core principles with some more realist ones, like the maintenance of India’s

‘strategic autonomy’, but to do so by employing a mixture of old and new theories and

rationalities. The authors call for India to become active managers of international order,

rather than passive critics. They insist that if India is to fulfil this role, it must integrate into

the global economy, reducing barriers to inward and outward trade and investment. This will

not only underpin India’s further development, but also its national security, as the authors

argue that an integrated global economy is crucial to binding states – they are especially

concerned here about China – into a stable and peaceful ‘rule-bound’ international order.

Internally, they also call for governance reforms. In part, what they envisage is simply the

realisation of a liberal vision of India in which the rule of law and democratic institutions

prevail. But in part too, they buy into new theories and rationalities of ‘governance’, arguing

that government must be ‘joined-up’, networked and transparent, with integrated ‘multi- level

governance’ and a ‘clear sense of the knowledge architecture which modern states now

depend upon’.

Nonalignment 2.0 thus reflects the continuing power of Establishment ideas, but also

highlights the extent to which new beliefs and theories are challenging those ideas. It aims to

speak to an emerging public debate on foreign policy-making that exists beyond the closeted

elite in New Delhi, if only to persuade the critics of the virtues of inherited wisdom.

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Changing domestic factors

Nonalignment 2.0 is also significant because it responds in an overt and self-

conscious way to changes in both India’s international circumstances and its domestic

arrangements. While foreign policy-making in India remains highly centralized, and decision-

making remains largely in the hands of a small core group, this elite now faces new domestic

factors that complicate their work and undermine their capacity solely to determine its

direction. The overarching challenge faced by India’s elite is the ongoing ‘crisis of

governability’ (Kohli 1990). According to one recent analysis, this crisis involves:

…unstable governments, frequent elections and changes of electoral moods, inability

to accommodate and reconcile contending demands and needs of difference social

groups and classes, weakening of law and order, growing civil discord and

disturbance, sometimes reaching the proportions of insurgency, communal violence,

increasing recourse of people to violent and extra-constitutional agitations, growing

corruption, and, above all, the failure of governments at the Centre and the states to

implement their policies or to provide effective governance.’ (Chandra, Mukherjee

and Mukherjee 2008: 667-668).

For foreign policy, the critical dimensions of this crisis are the instability of governments,

insurgency and the failure of effective governance.

As in most liberal democratic states, India’s elections do not commonly turn on

foreign policy issues (Ghosh 1994). But this is not to say that Indian foreign policymakers are

immune from pressure from the electorate, nor that Indian parties do not make stands on

foreign policy issues in elections and between them (see, for example, Bhambhri 1980). And

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as India’s domestic politics become more complex, this pressure is arguably increasing.

India’s electoral map is slowly fragmenting. Since 1989 no major party has been able to win

an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha; in 2009, the Congress and BJP Parties commanded

just 29% and 10% of the vote. As a consequence, every government since 1989 has either

been a minority government, with supporting partners, or a coalition. The current United

Progressive Alliance II (UPA-II) government comprises 11 parties, including the Congress,

and is opposed by two major multi-party blocs, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance of

9 parties, and the Third Front of 12 mainly socialist parties.

The inability of the major parties to win absolute majorities in their own right in

federal elections thus allows smaller parties to call at least some of the shots when it comes to

policy-making. This became apparent under the UPA-I government in 2007-08 during

parliamentary and extra-parliamentary debates over the US-India Nuclear Deal, and may well

emerge again in the ongoing dispute over opening India to foreign investment in its retail

sector. Although no vote was required on the Nuclear Deal in either the Rajya Sabha or Lok

Sabha, pressure was exerted on the UPA-I government by parties of the Left Front, which

decided to withdraw support from Manmohan Singh and force a vote of no confidence in his

leadership and his government. Only the defection of the Samajwadi Party from the Left

Front to support the government, together with controversial votes from BJP members,

permitted Manmohan Singh survive the vote. Time will tell if this episode foreshadowed

further similar disputes, or whether this was a singular case.

Political fragmentation and instability also mean that state governments can play a

role in foreign policy-making and implementation, particularly when it comes to the

management of foreign investment or particular border areas. Indeed, the growing influence

of state governments over foreign policy has been argued to be one of the most marked

developments of recent times (Jenkins 2003a; Sridharan 2003). This is especially true in

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economic issues, as India’s states engage in competition for development aid and loans, as

well as foreign direct investment (FDI). As Jenkins observes, ‘[o]fficial clearance from New

Delhi is still required for many foreign direct investments, but the relative importance of state

governments has increased dramatically since 1991’ (Jenkins 2003b: 603-604). India’s Chief

Ministers (CM) now travel regularly and widely in search of loans and investment, whether

to the World Economic Forum at Davos or, as Gujarat’s controversial CM Narendra Modi

has done, to China and other parts of Asia. A number of state governments now have offices

dedicated to relations with international organizations, notably the World Trade Organization,

or with overseas development agencies (Mattoo and Jacob 2010: pp. 32-35). Although there

is no requirement for the Union government to consult the states and no formal mechanisms

for this to happen, informal dialogues have been started on a series of core issues, notably the

impact of free trade agreements on agriculture and other industries in key states (Mattoo and

Jacob 2010: 35-36).

There are also signs that regional parties are beginning to shape foreign policy even in

non-economic issues. India’s relations with Bangladesh have been affected by positions taken

by state governments in West Bengal. The CPI(M) government of that state blocked the

deportations of suspected Bangladeshi citizens from Maharashtra in 1998 and has used its

influence to control the activities of the nominally centrally-controlled Border Security Force

(Dossani and Vijaykumar 2010, 179-185). And according to Tharoor, the new Trinamool

Congress government of Mamata Banerjee recently ‘stymied’ a water-sharing agreement with

Bangladesh (Tharoor 2012: 363). Attempts have also been made by Tamil politicians and

civil society groups to shape India’s foreign policy towards Sri Lanka (Tharoor 2012: 363).

Finally, there is the intangible influence of public opinion. Back in 1970,

Bandyopadhyaya argued that ‘[i]n a parliamentary democracy the general pattern of foreign

policy is inevitably affected by public opinion’, especially about emotive and high-profile

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issues such as Tibet or Pakistan (Bandyopadhyaya 1970: 109). But he also noted that very

little reliable information about foreign policy reached most people and that the majority of

the population were too ill-educated or ill-served by quality media to form much of an

opinion at all (Bandyopadhyaya 1970: 107). This description no longer applies. Levels of

literary have improved significantly; India is served by a vibrant – if not always perfect –

media covering papers, radio, TV, and the internet which engages with foreign policy issues.

Moreover, India is witnessing the emergence of a series of new think-tanks and

pressure groups keen to shape both public opinion on foreign policy issues, especially in the

educated middle class, and public policy. Alongside well-established and government- funded

bodies like the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), new actors have appeared,

and not merely in New Delhi, including the Mumbai-based Gateway House (the Indian

Council on Foreign Relations) and the Chennai-based Takshashila Institution. Quite how

influential these bodies are over either opinion or policy is a matter for debate, but their

existence complicates the context in which policy-makers must operate.

Reforms and responses

The changing context in which foreign policy must be made has prompted a series of

piecemeal reforms and responses by the core executive and the MEA, as well as other parts

of the policy-making establishment. Three waves of reform have taken place since 1991.

The first set of reforms sought to address chronic weaknesses in institutional

arrangements concerning parliamentary oversight of foreign and security policy-making and

implementation and attempted to redirect the focus of the MEA towards new priorities. These

institutional weaknesses – and their implications – had earlier been highlighted by the Bofors

scandal, which first erupted in 1987, and which has rumbled on to this day. That scandal

demonstrated the extent to which decision-making in a range of areas related to national

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security, including defence procurement, had been concentrated in the hands of a few

members of the executive, with little or no involvement of the legislative branch of

government or accountability to parliament.

In 1991, in part to address these issues, the minority government of P. V. Narasimha

Rao attempted to improve parliamentary scrutiny and accountability in a series of reforms.

Rao was a highly experienced politician, but he also had extensive knowledge of the

implementation of foreign and security policy, having served as both EAM and defence

minister at various points during the 1970s and 80s (Dixit 2004: 225-47). Drawing on that

experience, he created new parliamentary committees to oversee a range of ministries,

including both foreign affairs and defence, which came into being in April 1993 (Parliament

of India 2012). Particularly important was the Standing Committee on External Affairs,

which has the right to summon and cross-examine MEA officials (Dixit 1996, 431). These

committees, composed of members of the Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha, scrutinize grants

to ministries and consider their Annual Reports.

Rao also asked the incoming Foreign Secretary, J. N. Dixit, to rationalize and re-focus

the MEA. New territorial departments were created in the MEA to reflect new foreign policy

priorities and new geopolitical realities. The new Asia-Pacific Division signalled India’s

intention to ‘Look East’; the new Central Asia Division simply acknowledged, as least at the

beginning, the emergence of new states from the collapsing Soviet empire (Dixit 1996, 55-

56). Rao insisted too that the MEA spent more time on economic diplomacy (Dixit 1996, 57-

59) – a plea that has been made consistently over the years, but with mixed results (see

Bandyopadhyaya 1970, 172-173; Tharoor 2012, 333).

This first wave of reforms was potentially far-reaching and consequential, but they

fell far short of their objectives. Recent studies, most notably Tharoor’s Pax Indica, argue

that parliamentary scrutiny and influence over foreign policy has not noticeably improved

18

since the early 1990s (Tharoor 2012: 353-365). Tharoor complains that the Standing

Committee on External Affairs spends ‘much of its time receiving delegations from an

assortment of foreign countries for exchanges that are often mind-numbing in their

formality’, as well as engaging in the more consequential business of reviewing draft

legislation concerning the MEA and holding the EAM to account (Tharoor 2012: 360).

The second set of reforms had more complex origins. In November 1998 the BJP-led

National Democratic Alliance government established a set of new positions and institutions

in perhaps the biggest change in the foreign and security policy-making bureaucracy. They

created the post of National Security Advisor (NSA), appointing former diplomat and BJP-

fixer Brajesh Mishra to the role. Beneath the NSA the government also revive the National

Security Council (NSC), an institutional innovation made by the Janata government in 1990,

but not utilised by Rao’s Congress administration. Under the NDA government and

afterwards, the NSC comprised the Prime Minister and senior cabinet ministers, a Strategy

Policy Group (SPG) to advise the NSA and NSC, a Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC),

chaired by the NSA, to coordinate foreign and domestic intelligence from the IB and R&AW,

and finally a National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) to act as an official think-tank and

sounding board for strategy. These new arrangements were supplemented in 2002 by the

creation of a Nuclear Command Authority (NCA), with a Political Council and an Executive

Council, in charge of India’s nuclear deterrent (Pant 2005: 280; cf. Kanwal 2000).

These institutional innovations were driven by a number of different considerations.

One of the more important was the nuclear question. India’s nuclear tests at Pokhran in May

1998 highlighted the need to review both the governance of national security and national

strategy itself (Pant 2005). Once established, the NSAB was set to work designing a nuclear

strategy, which it delivered to the NSA for public release in August 1999. But less pressing

and more long-term concerns were also at play in the revival of the NSC and associated

19

bureaucracies. Commentators like K. Subrahmanyam had long argued that such a body was

needed to fill a void in the institutions of government, and especially to highlight the

centrality of national security to a core executive obsessed by economic development. ‘The

Indian NSC’, he argued

...cannot be on the US model which is situated in a presidential system. Nor is [sic]

the Indian NSC can ever function in that role befitting a superpower with an

aggressive global foreign and security policy.... The Indian NSC is [merely] meant to

enable the cabinet committee dealing with national security to take a holistic view of

[the] Indian development process inclusive of national security which today it is

incapable of doing because of the lack of an appropriate mechanism (Subrahmanyam

1999, xxiii).

A NSC was required, in other words, to address the ‘fragmented’ nature of policy-making,

coordination and implementation concerning national security (Subrahmanyam 1999, xxiv).

For Subrahmanyam, though he does not use this vocabulary, its creation was a ‘whole-of-

government’ or ‘joined-up’ solution to the ‘silos-isation’ of Indian government (for a similar

view, see Dixit 1996, 418-419).

The third set of reforms came under the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA)

government and are more diffuse in nature than the two earlier rounds. They involved

changes to structures and working practices of the MEA and the IFS, as well as related

government ministries and agencies. Perhaps the most important innovations were the

creation of the MOIA in 2004 and a Public Diplomacy Division (PDD) within MEA in 2006.

The first was designed to engage India’s sizeable diaspora, to tap their funds, know-how and

connections. It was also designed from the start to be the antithesis of popular perceptions of

20

Indian bureaucracy, declaring itself to be a ‘young, dynamic and interactive ministry’ on its

noticeably dynamic website (MOIA 2012). The PDD, by contrast, was created initially to try

to engage the Indian public in foreign and security policy-making, and subsequently to help

to ‘sell’ India abroad (Hall 2012). The PDD was tasked with engaging state governments,

corporate actors, and ordinary citizens. It was given this role in response to a perceived need

in New Delhi to generate a dialogue especially with communities and political representatives

in the border regions, particularly in the eastern states next to Bangladesh, Bhutan, Burma,

China and Nepal. Since its creation, it has come to assume other responsibilities as well,

engaging with foreign as well as domestic publics.

This set of reforms should be seen as responses to domestic pressures rather than

international or system-level changes. The MOIA is intended to help with India’s domestic

development – to connect with overseas Indians to source investment and knowledge, and

even to attract back some of the talent it has lost. The PDD is intended to address the

perceived gap between elite policy-making at the centre, in New Delhi, and new pressures in

frontline states, notably on India’s eastern borders with Bangladesh and China. Taken

together with earlier reforms, they mark attempts to improve governance by introducing more

openness and accountability, in line with liberal principles and new social scientific theories

and rationalities concerning institutional design.

Conclusion

Most analyses of Indian foreign policy focus on outcomes. This paper, by contrast,

has focussed on institutions, processes and practices. Since the end of the Cold War India has

not merely transformed its relations with key international actors, building a working

relationship with the United States and reengaging with its Asian neighbours, it has also

transformed the means by which it makes and implements policy in significant and

21

consequential ways. It has done this because of external pressures, to be sure, but domestic

factors have also been influential. The rise of new beliefs and theories about international

relations, together with the absorption of new rationalities, in the elite has played a critical

role. So too have the emergence of new domestic pressures, especially the ongoing crisis of

governability, the fragmentation of Indian electoral map, and the rise of the states. Together,

these factors are reshaping the ways in which Indian foreign policy is made and practiced.

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