The Foreign Service Journal, June 2014

24 JUNE 2014 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL Global winds of change are sweeping through the corridors of India’s Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian Foreign Service, opening up the process of foreign policy delivery. BY K I SHAN S . RANA THE INDIAN FOREIGN SERVICE I n New Delhi, the Ministry of External Affairs and the Indian Foreign Service have long been seen as silos, sometimes criticized at home as aloof and elitist. Yet peers view the IFS as among the best diplomatic services. Foreign embassies in New Delhi sometimes find MEA exasperating. How does one explain such paradoxes? Global winds of change now sweep through the corridors of South Block—and Jawahar Bhavan, the new second home of MEA—in effect opening up the process of foreign policy delivery. This is the result of several elements: complexity and new issues in international dialogue; a larger role played by both the head of government and by functional min- istries; the expanded activities of non-state actors; the ubiquity of electronic and social media; as well as increased volatility of foreign affairs. The same change is transforming diplomacy the world over, forcing foreign ministries to scramble in response. The Indian Foreign Service is an “integrated” service, designed from its 1946 creation to handle political, commercial, consular and all other external tasks. So, for example, some 70 of the 121 Indian embassies worldwide have commercial sections that are staffed by the Ministry of External Affairs but funded by the Department of Commerce. Unlike the American system, the IFS has no separate commercial service or even a specialist “cone.” In this “holistic” approach, the IFS is responsible for all politi- cal, economic, public affairs and consular work, though some embassy jobs go to officials from outside the IFS (that number is now set to increase, as we see below). In my view, this leads to FOCUS OTHER COUNTRIES’ DIPLOMATS The Glass Gets Fuller Kishan S. Rana was a member of the Indian Foreign Service from 1960 to 1995, serving as ambassador to Algeria, Czechoslovakia, Kenya, Mauritius and Germany. He was also joint secretary in Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s office from 1981 to 1982, and later headed personnel administration in the Ministry of Exter- nal Affairs. Ambassador Rana now teaches, writes and advises other governments on diplomatic practice. He is the author of 21st Century Diplomacy: A Practitioner’s Guide (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011) and The Contemporary Embassy: Paths to Diplomatic Success (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).