Mindless austerity

At a time of declining production, rising inflation and unchecked fiscal deficit — some hints from responsible quarters suggest that currently this deficit is a little higher than six per cent, as against the budget target of 5.1 per cent — austerity in the government’s spending is not just necessary but a must.

Even so this cannot mean that all expenditure, essential or inessential, should be subjected to uniform cut across the board. The axe must not be wielded with eyes widely shut. The latest thoughtless cut, imposed on the already fund-starved ministry of external affairs, underscores the point.
Last year when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met the leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at their annual session in Bali he invited them to hold their 2012 summit — which coincides with the 20th anniversary of this country’s association with Asean — in New Delhi. This was a welcome initiative because this country has vital stakes in Southeast nations, if only to achieve its objective of “Looking East” and fashioning a just and transparent security architecture in Asia.
Now in a bolt from the blue, the budget of Rs 100 crore, sanctioned for the Asean Summit, has been slashed hugely, reportedly to only Rs 40 crore, ironically, just two months before the commemorative summit of one of the more successful organisations for regional cooperation begins. Mandarins of the foreign office are at their wits’ end. They are worrying that a number of major events connected with the summit would have to be cancelled, which would not go down well with Asean leaders, among the friendliest to India. One official was heard saying, “The yawning gap between the North Block (from where the finance ministry operates) and the South Block (housing the ministries of external affairs and defence) is widening.”
Sadly, this is by no means all. A succession of other cuts, some ad hoc, have “put on the block” this country’s programme for aid to its neighbours and to countries of Africa. Nobody seems to have devoted any thought to the consequences of slashing of the money originally earmarked for the construction of houses in Sri Lanka for the hapless Tamils of that country who were displaced during the protracted civil war and are still awaiting rehabilitation.
No other neighbour has closer and more cordial relations with us than Bhutan. The history of mutually beneficial cooperation with it is long. Yet, three hydroelectric projects in the Himalayan country are in the doldrums because of the cash crunch in New Delhi. Let me not prolong this dismal list and turn to the much larger problem of Indian diplomacy. It is of a very long standing from which there is unlikely to be an early or easy escape.
Even when we were preening ourselves over more than eight per cent rate of growth and, as a rising country looking forward to a wider role on the international stage, friendly foreign experts on diplomacy as well as their Indian counterparts were constantly warning New Delhi that this country lacked adequate skilled and trained manpower to transform its diplomatic dream into reality. Their message was that the strength of the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) was disastrously low and must be augmented fast.
When Shivshankar Menon was foreign secretary the government approved a plan to double the IFS strength in five years. The time limit is virtually over but the target is far from being attained. The limited extent to which the service’s strength has increased has been vitiated by the hold of the closed-shop mentality on the entire administrative system. The foreign office has included in its fold laterally some members of other all-India services, principally the Indian Administrative Services. But that’s about all. There seems strong resistance to the idea of relying on ample expertise outside the government’s ranks even on contract.
Now the cash crunch would become an insurmountable obstacle to expansion of the foreign policy machine. For, it cannot be overlooked that the current ad hoc cuts have come on top of a whopping reduction in the MEA’s budget. The ministry had asked for a total of Rs 13,000 crore that includes the aid to friendly countries, but was given Rs 9,661 crore with the instruction that this was subject to a further 10 per cent cut mandatory for all ministries and departments.
Despite this bleak backdrop some brave souls have intensified the struggle to persuade the government to see sense about the lamentably low strength of the foreign service. Shashi Tharoor, a former minister of state for external affairs and a former under-secretary-general of the UN, has been hammering home this message since earlier this year, lamenting that the IFS is “less than a fifth of China’s and roughly equal to that of tiny Singapore”. Of the number of those at the US state department that are constantly busy looking after relations with India and the reciprocal arrangements in New Delhi, the less said the better. A more chilling indicator of the same situation is that America has a diplomat for a population of 16,000, Japan for 23,000, China for 321,000 and India for 1,341,000.
The stress and overstretch this causes, at home and with friendly countries, is acute. For instance, at a gathering of foreign policy wonks at the launch of former foreign secretary Muchkund Dube’s book India’s Foreign Policy: Coping with Changing World, the Bangladesh high commissioner, Tariq Karim, pointed out that his country’s relations with India had soared so high that they need a 24x7 joint secretary at the Indian foreign office to look after them. But the incumbent remains overburdened with five other countries and the Indian Ocean! Even this pales into insignificance compared with the appalling state of affairs relating to Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran, the three countries about which Indian concerns are stupendous. A single joint secretary is in charge of all three, and has only one director and two deputy secretaries to assist him.