It is time somebody blew the whistle on the crippling affliction of severe understaffing in the ministry of external affairs (MEA).

India is served by the smallest diplomatic corps of any major country, not just far smaller than the big powers but by comparison with most of the larger emerging countries.
At just about 900 IFS officers to staff India’s 120 missions and 49 consulates abroad, India has the fewest foreign service officers among the Brics countries. This compares poorly not just to the over 20,000 deployed by the United States, and the large diplomatic corps of the European powers — UK (6,000), Germany (6,550) and France (6,250) — but also to Asia’s largest foreign services, Japan (5,500) and China (4,200). The picture looks even more modest when compared to the 1,200 diplomats in Brazil’s foreign ministry. It is ironic that India — not just the world’s most populous democracy but one of the world’s largest bureaucracies — has a diplomatic corps roughly equal to tiny Singapore’s 867.
The size and human capacity of the Indian foreign service suffers by comparison with every one of its peers and key interlocutors. While this may partially be a tribute to the quality and the appetite for work of the 900 who staff the foreign service, it lays bare some obvious limitations. I remember the frustrations of the 19 Latin American ambassadors in New Delhi at the near-impossibility of getting an appointment with the sole joint secretary (assisted by one mid-ranking professional) who was responsible for all their countries. At a time when India is seen as stretching its global sinews, the frugal staffing patterns of its diplomatic service reveals a country punching well below its weight on the global stage.
A few examples will suffice. The joint secretary in charge of East Asia has to handle India’s policies regarding China, Japan, the two Koreas, Mongolia, Taiwan, Tibetan refugees, and the disputed frontier with China, in addition to unexpected crises like those relating to India’s response to the Japanese earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. Inevitably China consumes most of his attention and relations with the other crucial countries within his bailiwick are neglected or assigned to one of the five junior officials working under him. Another joint secretary is responsible for India’s relations with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, while a colleague of equivalent rank handles Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Burma and the Maldives, all countries of significant diplomatic sensitivity and security implications. One more joint secretary has been assigned the dozen countries of Southeast Asia, with Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific thrown in! It is instructive that the US embassy in New Delhi, with a 20-person political section, has more people following the MEA than the MEA has to deal with the US embassy — in its own country.
As an acute observer, Canada’s former high commissioner to India, David Malone, wrote, the MEA’s “headquarters staff work punishing hours, not least preparing the visits of the many foreign dignitaries laying siege to Delhi in ever growing numbers as India’s importance has expanded… India’s overburdened foreign service is, on average, of very high quality, but because it is stretched so thin, its staff spends too much of its time conducting India’s international relations through narrow diplomatic channels, managing ministerial and other visits, negotiating memoranda of understanding of no great significance, and by other means that reflect only a fraction of the rich reality of international relations today and of official Delhi’s actual international interests.”
The problem has not escaped the attention of the professionals. In 2008, foreign secretary Shivshankar Menon moved a Cabinet note proposing a doubling of his effective diplomatic strength. The government agreed to increase the cadre by 520 personnel (320 in the IFS category and 200 additional support staff), but the hierarchy-minded bureaucracy immediately stepped in to forestall any dramatic expansion — which would have required, for instance, the infusion of external professional talent at all levels of the MEA by mid-career recruitment from the other services or even (perish the thought!) from the private sector.
Instead of reaching beyond the government to people who could fill the gaps in the service — more French and Spanish speakers, for instance, or more professional journalists for public diplomacy positions — the implementation of the Cabinet decision was stretched out over 10 years by simply increasing the annual intake into the IFS (including promotions from the clerical grades of the IFS “B”) by 32 a year. Even this has not materialised, since the MEA has not found 32 additional worthy candidates in each of the three years since the Cabinet approved Mr Menon’s proposal. Lateral entrants have not been encouraged; a circular to the other government departments soliciting candidacies have turned up few whom the MEA is excited about. The chronic understaffing is therefore likely to continue for more than another decade.
The irony is that as far back as 1966, the Pillai Committee that studied the IFS had recommended a broader-based recruitment process that would seek out professionals in various fields, between the ages of 28 and 35, for mid-career employment in the foreign service. The idea was to compensate for the lack of experience (and the consequently more restricted vision) of the standard process which recruited only 21 to 24-year-olds, who “grew” in the MEA within the norms and confines of the foreign office bureaucracy. The Pillai report suggested that 15 to 20 per cent of the annual recruitment be set aside for older recruits “to permit entry of persons with specialised knowledge of international relations and area studies, experience in management and administration and public relations”.
The recommendation was never implemented and the thinking behind it continues to be strongly resisted by the entrenched bureaucracy. Ironically the need is even greater today than when Pillai did his work nearly half a century ago. In today’s multilateral diplomacy, for instance, the MEA needs expertise that it cannot provide from its own ranks. For instance, climate change has become a hot-button diplomatic issue that needs to be discussed and negotiated in multilateral forums where other delegations rely on technical and scientific expertise that they find indispensable, but which the MEA eschews because it is unwilling to look beyond its own ranks (or those of its retired grandees). In an era when a certain level of specialisation is considered essential by many foreign ministries, Indian diplomacy still abounds in talented generalists.
This is why Parliament’s Standing Committee on External Affairs has recommended that the MEA adopt a practice of augmenting its ranks with mid-career recruits from outside, including the private sector. I’m holding my breath for their response.