Finally, there is still a challenge linked to growing political fragmentation and influence of regional parties and regional governments on major external relation decisions. For instance, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee became a hindrance; putting herself in the way of strengthening cooperation with Bangladesh, as India has blocked major bilateral treaties with it since 2011, and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalita complicated the Centre’s relations with Sri Lanka, pressuring for a harder stance on the question of Sri Lankan Tamils in recent years. Although this has been temporarily resolved with the strong democratic mandate of the BJP in the last elections, roles of the centre and regions in foreign policy must be better defined to avoid confusion and stymieing solution=providing decisions.
Moreover, the number of actors involved in India’s external relations – ranging from the Ministry of External Affairs and the Office of the Prime Minister, to other ministries (Overseas Indian Affairs, Commerce and Industry, Trade, Tourism, Culture, Energy, Oil and Gas, etc.) to state agencies (like the ICCR) to private and non-state actors – have additionally amplified the sense of discord and lack of a cohesive external strategy agenda.
By sending mixed signals to the international community, India undermines its own credibility. It seems that India is still trapped between its idealist principles and pragmatic national interest in pursuing foreign policy. Bridging these two elements is a daunting task, and internal divisions scar India’s international reputation.
As India’s role in international affairs grows, the government will need to pay special attention to present a more coherent, predictable and legitimate foreign policy. It should make sure that it practices what it preaches, and insure its foreign policy choices are based on strong foundations. It does not necessarily mean that India needs to revert to an idealist and moral policy. It needs a policy that is based on clear, solid and convincing arguments.
It would be advisable for India to describe these principles and directions in some grand foreign strategy. It should help to better coordinate foreign policy among different stakeholders and improve complementarity of efforts. It would also contribute to creation of an international image depicting India as more predictable and consistent. It is important that the new strategy envision the most effective combination of hard and soft power resources and develop the Indian image of smart power. India must go back to its tradition of diplomacy and not see things as a sum-zero game. As recalled by one Indian diplomat, Jawaharlal Nehru said: “no government can adopt a policy which is demonstrably to the disadvantage of the country. But, at the same time, he pointed out, we must strive to harmonise the national interests of various countries while advancing our own” (Dutt, 2007: p.247). This principle, as recalled by Indian President Pranab Mukerjee, as “enlightened self-interest”, can be a good base for India’s grand foreign policy strategy.
Boosting Foreign Policy “Software”
The under performance of India’s soft power has also been a victim of the same deficiencies that have hampered the effectiveness of its traditional diplomacy. Several authors have already underlined the problem of the modest capacities of the Indian Foreign Service, especially in relation to the growing scope and ambitions of Indian external policy (Markey, 2009; Rana, 2010; Sirkar, 2009; Tharoor, 2012). Indian expert Kishan Rana’s comparison of the Indian Foreign Service with several Asian countries reveals serious limitations and several bottlenecks in the functioning of Indian diplomacy. Daniel Markey (2009: p.189) called it a problem of the “software” of India’s foreign policy, understood as “the intellectual and constitutional infrastructure needed to exercise power on the international arena.” It consists of five types of institutions: a nation’s bureaucracy, which is involved in foreign policy formulation and implementation, think tanks, universities, the media, and private business, which also plays a role in this domain. According to Markey, these institutions “charged with researching, formulating, debating, and implementing foreign policy are too often underdeveloped, in decay or chronically short of resources” (ibid).
Firstly, the Indian Foreign Service is remarkably small, underpaid, and hobbled by its selection process, which “remains firmly rooted in the old civil service traditions” and rarely relies on outside expertise (ibid, pp.189–192). Although the quality of Indian diplomats is highly regarded and appreciated for its professionalism, the problem is in the quantity. With fewer than 800 professional diplomats in 2006, the service was stretched thinly across 119 resident missions and 49 consulates around the world. India’s diplomatic corps is not greater in numbers than other middle-size Asian states, such as Thailand or Indonesia (Rana, 2008), and the number of personnel in their their ranks too are far fewer than other major powers. As Markey pointed out in 2009, other developing states, like Brazil and China, have at least 50 per cent more professional diplomats than India; Germany and the United Kingdom have roughly four times more personnel; and the US has nearly 20,000 diplomats – far beyond the reach of any other country (Markey, 2009: p.196). In fact, this leads to a bizarre situation in which there are more American diplomats based at the US Embassy in Delhi than there are Indian diplomats in the MEA Headquarters of their home country. Being a country with over 1.2 billion people, India has only slightly more diplomats than city-state Singapore, with just over 5 million citizens. Although Indian Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon advocated a doubling of MEA personnel back in 2007, this aim is hard to achieve with an average of 20 people admitted to the service every year (Markey, 2009: p.196). This imposes very practical and logistical problems for countries willing to strengthen cooperation with India.
The problem is not only with a shortage of staff but also with financial allocation for diplomacy in India. The budget of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs from 2006–2007, US$ 563.2 million, was virtually equal to that of Brazil, but roughly half of that of China, significantly below nations such as the UK (US$ 3.75 billion in FY 2006), Germany (US$ 3.02 billion in FY 2006), France (US$ 3.33 billion in FY 2007) and Japan (US$ 2.92 billion in FY 2007) and almost 20 times less than that of the US (around US$ 10 billion in FY 2006) (Markey, 2009: p.197). With such limited human capital and financial resources, not only is traditional diplomacy but also the newer soft power is being severely compromised.
Secondly, Indian diplomacy suffers from limited cooperation and the intellectual support it receives from its universities and think tank communities. Even if India’s public institutions of higher education are, in general, highly regulated, poorly funded and rated below average on quality parameters, the science of International Relations (IR) is particularly underdeveloped and neglected (Markey, 2009: p.194). There are only a few academic institutions with comparable achievements and status in IR, such as the oldest School of International Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in Delhi; although, even this institution does not play as influential a role as it did in the past. Moreover, there have only been a limited number of institutional links and cooperation between the MEA and other agencies involved in foreign relations on one hand and researchers and academicians on the other. The creation of the National Security Advisory Board – consisting of 20 non-governmental experts from various fields – as a consultative body to the National Security Council (established in 1998) stands as a positive, but rather isolated, example. The quality and relevance of research on IR is further constrained by limited access to information and archives on recent history of Indian foreign policy. Hence, Indian foreign policy is more influenced by sensational reports drafted by the vibrant Indian press and TV journalists, rather than by in-depth analysis and research of a growing number of scholars and experts on IR.
Finally, experts point at the need for better use of private sector and media potential in Indian diplomacy. There are several important business organizations, (e.g., the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and ASOCHAM) and private corporations (e.g., Reliance, Infosys, TATA) th
at play an increasingly active role in international cooperation and promotion of India. There are also successful examples of private-public partnerships, like the Indian Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) and “India Everywhere” campaign of 2007, which show the usefulness of combining private actors in building the positive image of India abroad. These initiatives should be further expanded and supported to broaden outreach and improve the effectiveness of official policies.
Over the years, several propositions have been labeled in order to improve Indian diplomacy. Most crucially, the Indian government should step up the MEA budget, expand, reform, pay and train Indian Foreign Service officers, and consider ways to “bring non-career officers into the MEA and other parts of the foreign policy establishment as term-limited fellows” (Markey, 2009: p.205). The American expert further argues that the government should encourage growth of world-class social science research and teaching; dedicate extra resources to think tanks and universities dealing with international affairs; open wider access to government information, both historical and contemporary; and boost debates on foreign policy (Markey, 2009). Tharoor (2012) suggests that the IFS should make greater use of its NRI community, which is often well-exposed to the global arena and could significantly improve the quality of the Foreign Service.
Still, after years of debate and modest reform, not much has changed in the organisation and strength of the IFS. Most recommendations made in recent years are still relevant and wait to be fulfilled. Until 2012, the Indian diplomatic cadre expanded only slightly, to 845 career diplomats and 3,962 total personnel (MEA, 2013). By December 2012, there were still over 500 vacancies in the diplomatic corps. On the positive side, however, there was a significant increase in the MEA budget, which doubled between 2007 and 2008 and again between 2012 and 2013, from Rs. 4572.39 crore to Rs. 9662.00 crore. There is also growing awareness about the need to strengthen the link between the MEA and the IR community in India (Suri, 2011: p.302).
Several initiatives undertaken by the Public Diplomacy Division – including public lectures, an annual International Relations Congress, and development of a comprehensive database of experts – were launched to better utilise the expertise of Indian specialists and connect with society. The emergence of private think tanks, tasked primarily with international relations, and strengthening of public ones, as well as the growing popularity of IR science in public and private universities, all offer hope for stronger non-governmental input to foreign policy formulation from outside the government. Also, the promise of reform and expansion of the Foreign Services, included in the BJP manifesto in 2014, and the personal commitment of the new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, to strengthen Indian diplomacy, may push for real and substantial changes in India’s foreign policy software. As many previous promises brought little change, it is to be seen whether India will prepare itself better to play a larger international role this time.
Strengthening Soft Power Capabilities
Having invested considerably in soft power in the recent years, the Indian government needs to make another push for reinforcing specific soft power policies, instruments and institutions. Soft power should be recognized as a legitimate, real and important element in the country’s external relations, long dominated by hard security considerations. As argued by Tharoor, “India will not need to try as hard, but it will need to do more than it currently does to leverage its natural soft power into a valuable instrument of its global strategy” (2012: p.290).
The scale of Indian development assistance, cultural diplomacy, and economic promotion all fall short of the actions of other major powers in this area. For instance, educational assistance offered by the ICCR, with over 3,000 scholarships to foreign students annually, must be appreciated, but it is still much less than what is made available by other major powers. Moreover, the attractiveness of these scholarships, in terms of financial conditions and quality of education, lags far behind many other available options. Similarly, cultural promotion is often old fashioned and under resourced. While the expanded network of Indian cultural centers abroad numbers 35 institutes, China aims at establishing 500 Confucius Institutes around the globe; the network of Alliance Francaise spans over 1,000 locations in 135 countries; and the British Council is present in several hundred cities in over 100 countries. With this level of engagement, India will fail in competition with China and other developed countries. More worryingly, even this modest scale of ambition has been at risk in recent years, as India’s main instrument for cultural diplomacy continues to wallow in a crippling fund crunch.
Even as Modi’s government talks big about projecting India’s soft power, the dire financial situation has forced the ICCR to constrain its ambitions and look for new modes of operation. It is reported that, instead of further expanding the network of cultural centres, chairs abroad, the ICCR closed down centres in Toronto, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi and a sub-centre in Fiji’s Lautoka (Mitra, 2015). According to the parliamentary standing committee report on the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), tabled in Parliament in early 2015, the ICCR was allocated just Rs 192 crore for its activities in 2015–16, instead of requested Rs 250.48 crore. This poses a risk that, unlike China, Indian cultural outreach may be limited in the coming years, unless new ways of operation are found. One idea is to open new centres in cooperation with either the foreign government or with private organisations. After the first such PPP (private-public partnership) model, a cultural centre was opened in Spain, and the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) since has drawn up the rules for opening more such centres. The next Indian cultural centre on the PPP model will be in Busan, South Korea (Mitra, 2015). Although this can be a temporary solution for hard times, India will need to find more resources for cultural promotion if it wants to be more active in projecting its vision.
It would also need to improve coordination among many different public and private actors of different soft power initiatives and present a more proactive approach. Rana, a distinguished expert on India’s diplomacy, pointed out in 2010: “No effort has been made to reach out to the other actors that contribute to India’s overseas image; they deal with specific attributes of the country’s soft power, be it tourism authorities, or those dealing with the media, education and economic management and the like” (2010: 367). The problem was already acknowledged by Navdeep Suri (2011: 302), who commented: “In our context in India, several of these activities remain in independent silos and there is a need for us to evolve better coordination mechanisms and also take a longer term view on the entire issue of messaging and strategic communications”. One possible solution to this problem would be establishing a “public diplomacy board” like in some western countries, to coordinate and harmonise actions in a manner that reinforces the country’s image (Rana, 2010: p.367). Greater centralization of different soft power policies under the Ministry of External Affairs, as observed recently (with the merging of the MOIA with the MEA and the merging of the Public and External Public Diplomacy Divisions) seems to be a step in the right direction, but still, much more needs to be done.
Conclusion
Narendra Modi has attempted to reassure his audiences about India’s position as a major global soft power and strengthened its public diplomacy tools. Culture, the diaspora and social media have been given a larger role in the country’s external relations. Yet, important constraints remain, and India will need stalwart determination to overcome existing limitations. Overcoming some shortcomings, such as addressing development and security concerns, will take more time. Others, such as the reforms in the bureaucracy or improving diplomacy software, can be dealt with in the foreseeable future. Much will depend on the success of economic reforms and growth of its economy, both of which will give the government more room to manoeuvre.
India will need to protect its assets (such as a democratic, open and secular society) and improve its hard power capabilities (such as tackling poverty, solving security threats, etc.) to wield its soft power. But it ca
n already actively use its existing soft power instruments and invest more in this dimension of its external policy. Currently, there is no reason why India should be a defensive soft power. It is one of few countries that can offer cultural, political and economic models, alternative to the West or China. As the world is increasingly interested in India, the country should return this curiosity and adequately respond to this rising attention. It requires a willingness to engage in meaningful debates on different aspects of India’s perspective on crucial international topics and its internal issues.
Although India’s development constraints are well known, this level of support will not make India a global power at par with other P5 members. In order to have more impact on international perceptions of India, there is need for further investment in soft power resources and strengthening soft power tools.
Conclusion: Emerging Smart Power
In the post-Cold War period, extensive writing has depicted India as a “rising power”. The bulk of attention has been paid to the huge potential of its growing economy and significant military build-up. Somehow, the less tangible dimension of India’s strength has been overlooked in the mainstream discourse. Opinions like that of Shashi Tharoor – India as a “land of better story” and its major global status lies in soft rather than hard power – have been largely ignored by the strategic community. This has changed only recently. As more countries heavily invest in increasing their soft power, India is pushing itself to catch up with this global trend.
India’s Soft Power Page 22