The Hindu Business Line : Supersession at MEA

Supersession of one can be a credible proposition; of two dubious; of three who have made it to equivalent slots in the same Ministry, apparently on the strength of their earlier performance, contestable; but supersession of 16 — and on the ground of that elusive byproduct (called merit) of so many subjectively appraised attributes — can only be described as not lending itself to the most contrived rationalisations.

Veterans who have been witness to the Government's erratic preferences for crucial assignments in recent years will find unacceptable the glib excuses trotted out by some of Mr Shiv Shankar Menon's colleagues and friends to justify his being catapulted to the post of Foreign Secretary, over the heads of 16 of his colleagues on the basis of his

record as was nondescript, an Adviser to the Atomic Energy Commission, a middle-level functionary in Austria, or the posts he held in Israel, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Separating grain from chaff

Supersession is a devastating experience for those left out in the cold, as it must have been for the Secretary (East), Mr Rajiv Sikri; Secretary (West), Mr Sashi Tripathi; and Secretary (Coordination), Mr Ringzing Wangdi.

If they were found wanting in mettle on any count, they would not have been cleared to be appointed to Secretary's rank. Indeed, in case they did not make the grade, the proper thing would have been to have them weeded out long ago, stationing next in line those who were deemed to be qualified to step into the Foreign Secretary's shoes.

Likewise, the Government should have taken others senior to Mr Menon in IFS (Messrs T. C. A. Rangachari, Atish Sinha, P. S. Haer and Arun Kumar from the 1970 batch, and Ms Veena Sikri, and Messrs S. S. Mukherjee, Navrekha Sharma, Amitabh Tripathi and Parthasarathy Ray, from the 1971 batch) into confidence as to why it thought they did not fit into its future calculations, and given them a chance to counter the Government's judgment about them.

In all this, there is a major problem confronting the Government in the very process of separating the grain from chaff.

Of the five pivotal postings in the Government's dispensation — the Cabinet Secretary, the Home Secretary, the Finance Secretary, the Commerce Secretary and the Foreign Secretary — the last is the one which it is difficult to pin down to specific, tangible or concrete job requirements.

Almost anyone who has the requisite experience and exposure in various desks in the Ministry of External Affairs at home and countries abroad (with postings in a sprinkling of international institutions) can do as well as any third person as the Foreign Secretary, provided he cultivates the needed spirit of conviviality and gets the message across with a degree of suavity and clarity.

Few that I have seen as Ambassadors or working at the secretariat are of the intellectual or scholarly type, exercising their minds over where India is, and should be, heading.

It should not be surprising if a survey held among those who come into contact with them shows a preponderant majority dissatisfied with their prescience, helpfulness or capacity for hard work.

Policy powerhouse

To make matters worse, there is no system in operation whereby an eminent, independent, multi-disciplinary body of experts in the field of foreign affairs is asked to go into contributions such as may have been made by persons within the field of choice in their recent assignments and prepare a panel for selection after a face-to-face discussion on emerging major foreign policy stakes.

For instance, one way of adjudging their suitability would be to put them through a grilling on questions such as: Is India wasting its time on the so-called Non-Aligned Movement? Should it at all have so many embassies in so many obscure places with no commensurate purpose being served in promoting culture, tourism, trade or commerce?

How to fashion a pulsating quadrilateral in dynamic equilibrium of approaches and interests with China, the US, the Pacific Rim and the immediate neighbourhood? What are the foreign policy dimensions of a projected economic superpower?

There was at one time in the Ministries of Home and External Affairs a Policy Planning Unit which was precisely meant to anticipate issues of critical importance and prepare the policymakers to be ready with timely and appropriate responses.

Those selected for heading these Units were groomed as high-fliers and, as in the case of K. R. Narayanan, even rose to become the President. It is worth reviving these Units as the policy power-houses of the respective Ministries.

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