Vote For Continuity

THE one-year extension for Foreign Secretary Salman Haider has finally ended the race for the top diplomatic post in the country and the associated uncertainty. Haider, who got the vote just four days ahead of his scheduled retirement on June 30, appears to be a beneficiary of circumstances. For, it was clearly a political decision, said to have been taken on the recommendation of External Affairs Minister Inder Kumar Gujral.

Haider was lucky that it is the United Front which is in power and not the Congress or the BJP. For one, he had problems with A.B. Vajpayee when the latter was foreign minister during the Janata Party rule. Under the Rao regime, Haider had developed serious differences with Pranab Mukherjee—caused largely by interference in the MEA's functioning by Mukherjee's OSD Omita Paul, an officer of the Indian Information Service.

The extension ends a spell of intense lobbying with political parties by Haider and Secretary (West) V.K. Grover. Others who had a chance were Grover's 1961 IFS batchmate Prakash Shah, now India's Permanent Representative at the UN, Secretary (East) K. Raghunath, India's ambassador to China C.S. Dasgupta and Secretary (Economic Relations) A.N. Ram—the last three of the 1962 batch.

With Haider in the saddle till June 1997, the 1961 batch comprising Grover and Shah will be out of reckoning for the top job—Grover retires by yearend and the latter in July 1997. One of the reasons that worked against Grover is that he would have had a very short tenure. Next year, the same argument can automatically rule out both Raghunath, who retires in November 1997, and Ram, who retires a month later. Dasgupta has more time: he turns 58 in July 1998.

Extensions are now fairly common—the Rao government itself granted it to numerous officers—but it always raises a lot of eyebrows within the foreign service when a foreign secretary's tenure is thus lengthened. For, it's a small service and an extension has a down-the-line effect. In the much bigger IAS and IPS, the cascading effect of an extension is cushioned by the large number of secretary-level or other top appointments that are available.

There is a fit case for making the foreign secretary's post a tenured one as with the three service chiefs, who stay for three years. Frequent changes in this important post have affected the working of the foreign office, creating a certain lack of continuity. But no government has considered the issue seriously—extensions have been given on an ad hoc basis and used as instruments of patronage.

Since no foreign secretary stays long enough, issues like cadre review, postings, functioning of the various divisions and proper deployment of personnel are not tackled properly. The ministry lacks proper computerisation, the filing system is antiquated and division heads don't have pro-per support and back-up. There is demoralisation in the foreign office. The net effect is that the execution of foreign policy suffers in a manner that's never quantifiable.

In Haider's case, the Government has justified the extension by citing this very need for continuity. Negotiations on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty are on and there is a possibility of bilateral talks with Pakistan. India is contesting the non-permanent seat in the UN Security council against Japan, at the year-end.

In fact, the news till mid-June was that Grover was getting the job with an extension. People who know Haider say he was indeed talking of shifting house and moving to a smaller place. But it all changed within a week. The Government perhaps thought that if an extension had to be given, it might as well give it to Haider.

His extension also serves a political purpose in that the UF's pro-minorities image will be reinforced, balancing the continuance of Naresh Chandra in Washington as Indian ambassador. Several ministers in the Deve Gowda Cabinet had sought Chandra's removal for his mishandling of the Babri Masjid issue.

However, no one is talking about the intense rivalry that was seen in the MEA prior to this announcement. His detractors point to his connections with Subramanian Swamy, whose daughter is engaged to Haider's son. Haider, a rather taciturn officer, starts his extended tenure with a controversy, caused by a letter from Madhu Bhaduri, India's consul general in Hamburg, Germany. She wrote to Gujral on June 23 complaining that she was being "subjected to discrimination and vindictiveness" by Haider. An officer of the 1968 batch, she complained that she had never been posted as head of mission anywhere or to an English-speaking country. Last year, she had requested Haider to post her to a place where her husband had the possibility of being associated with a university. This was not conceded and she was instead posted to Minsk, Belarus.

She noted that she had spent half her career at the headquarters and the rest in A, B and C postings. "The foreign secretary, on the other hand, has spent over 11 years in super A posts in London and New York." Only those with "direct links with the PMO" get "out-of-turn favours", she rued.바카라 웹사이트