The Hindu Business Line : <I>Cutting down on embassies </I>

It is possible to find an excuse for almost anything, however crazy it may be on the face of it. Ask any official of the Ministry of External Affairs whether India needs to have embassies and missions in more than 170 countries, with all the paraphernalia of luxurious mansions to serve as offices and the residences of Ambassadors-cum-Plenipotentiaries and their retinues, fleets of sleek limousines and fancy furniture.

You will have a long lecture on the paramount importance of furthering India's political, economic, trade, commercial and cultural interests in far corners of the world, how it is essential to extend the protective umbrella to Indians or persons of Indian origin, wherever resident, and take care of their needs and wants, how implementation of various schemes for technical cooperation and grant of aid to different countries require the establishment of chanceries, and how in an inter-dependent world, it is imperative for India to keep channels of communication open and nurture official and non-official contacts and keep the home Government briefed on the happenings.

A sleepy hollow

Notwithstanding these claims, the picture presented of an average mission in the eyes of Indian visitors is not that of a buzzing beehive but that of a sleepy hollow. They should consider themselves lucky if they are not given a rude brush-off by such of the staff as are present. Of course, the burra saheb, the Head of the Mission, would be said to be busy with some party or the other and not available. Seldom would you find an Indian traveller who has a good word to say about the usefulness of India's Embassies.

The delusion of grandeur that has led to the sprouting of Embassies in so many countries, some the size of a dot, and not easy to spot, on a large world map, and of little consequence to India, is one of the unfortunate legacies of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Nobody since then has dared to have a close and critical look at the idleness and ostentation it has entailed and the enormous waste of thousands of crores of rupees on mainly ceremonial functions.

Hangers-on

Of the annual budgetary allocation of around Rs 4,000 crore of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), one-fourth goes to the running of embassies and missions. Properties have been acquired and buildings constructed over the years for chanceries in 77 stations, residences of heads of mission in 83 stations and 610 residential apartments for other officials in 44 stations.

In fact, from 2005, a full-fledged projects division is functioning in the Ministry to look after acquisition/construction activities. The justification for this huge and costly superstructure does not seem to have been gone into in the recent past by either the Parliamentary Standing Committee on MEA or the Estimates Committee.

This is an era in which Governments keep themselves in touch by means of instant communication and frequent visits of high-level functionaries to exchange views and solve problems on the spot. They do not need any intermediation or interpretation by Ambassadors who, in any case, are reduced to mere hangers-on.

Hence, other than in capitals of acknowledged or emerging political, economic or technological heavyweights, such as the US, the UK, Japan, China, France and Germany, the embassies elsewhere can either be clubbed together to take care of a group of countries (as, for example, European Union, the Gulf, and Latin America) or wound up altogether.

At a pinch, I found the number of Indian missions can be brought down to 20 or so, making a number of posts in the various countries and at headquarters redundant, resulting in a saving of Rs 600 crore.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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