Indian

Foreign Policy Making Institutions

Dr. Dipanwita Chakravortty

Previous Year Questions

• 2021- How do the constituent states influence the

foreign policy making process in India? (15)
• 2020- Describe the structure and function of the
National Security Council. What role does it play in the
formulation of the IFP? (10)
• 2015- How does Parliament determine and influence
the making of India’s Foreign policy?
• 2014- The Ministry of External Affairs is losing its
importance in the making of India’s Foreign Policy with
the parallel rise of the PMO. Explain.
• 2012- Assess the scope and importance of setting up
the Public Diplomacy Division in the Ministry of External
Affairs in strengthening India’s Foreign Policy.
 Historical
Antecedents -

1843- British 1947- 1964- 1980s-

1784- Pitts 1946- Indian 1990s- Post
India Foreign Nehruvian Coalition
India Act Foreign Service LPG dynamics
Department Consensus Government
Institutions
Functional Divisions

Policy Planning
and Research
Division

Economic Division

Public Diplomacy
division
 Issues and Challenges

Markeys (2009)- “ the IFS was too small due

to its highly selective recruitment policy; K. Bajpai: MEA has a rather imperial and
mid-career training was “inadequate”; exclusivist view of foreign policy and does
outside expertise was not usually consulted, not trust entities outside the government,
and India’s think tanks and universities indeed, outside the IFS. At the same time, the
lacked information, access to government, or private and people sectors find MEA rather
funding; and the media and private business heavy-footed and old- fashioned as well as ill-
were not positioned to “undertake sustained informed in their areas of operation
foreign policy and ability.”
Kanti Bajpai and Bryon Chong- “India’s Foreign Policy Capacity” in the journal Policy Design and Practice
(2019)

Assessing Indian foreign policy capacity at the individual level

• Managerial and leadership skills of the officers- usually generalists. Need of the hour is specialists.
• Individual political knowledge/experience of dealing with political actors- The IFS is thought to live in its
own “bubble” by the other services

Assessment of Indian foreign policy capacity at the organizational level

• Critical mass of capable officials and the information infrastructure- The MEA (Lambah Report of 2002)
accepts that the current strength of the service is unable to meet the needs of India’s external commitments
(941 in 2017
• Relationship to political institutions
• Coordination with other actors and sectors

Assessment of Indian foreign policy capacity at the systemic level

 Lateral Entry

Benefits of Lateral Entry:

• Specialists
• Increasing number and diversity
• Larger democratic participation in policy making

Issues:

• Lack of Transparency
• Closed networks on Civil Servants
• Difference in organisational values
• Profit motive vs. public service
Parliament
Parliamentary Committee
Opposition Parties:
• Rajesh Rajagopalan: So, while the Modi
government appears befuddled about
handling the Chinese aggression, the sad
reality for India is that the opposition is
so paralysed it cannot even engage in
political mobilisation on a highly emotive
issue such as the loss of territory.
Chief of Defence Staff
Prime Minister’s Office
National
Security
Council
State Governments
Harsh Pant, director, studies, and head of the Strategic Studies
Programme at the ORF, agreed: “Policymakers have become
more open to taking advice from the outside. The NITI Aayog
is an example in itself — as the government’s own think tank,
it is constantly also engaging with other think tanks to advise
the government on policies.”

Nandan Nilekani- 2021 “It does seem like India will

eventually go the US way, where think tanks are aligned to
one party or the other, and every time there is a change of
government, you see that several experts from the
government move to think tanks, and those from think tanks
aligned to the new government make their way into the
government.”
Pressure Groups- Business Groups
• T. C. Schelling claimed, “Aside from war and preparations for war, and
occasionally aside from migration, trade is the most important
relationship that most countries have with each other.”
• Richard Cooper- ‘Trade Policy is Foreign Policy’- while traditionally
trade policy had dominated ‘high foreign policy’, the Cold War had
brought political issues to the fore and reduced the salience of business
interests in shaping foreign policy.
• Manmohan Singh (2004): It is on foundation of people-to-people and
business-to-business that we in government try to build state-to-state
relations.”
 Media

The current role of Media:

• the gradual erosion of the domestic political consensus on foreign policy,

giving the media the role of an arbiter and an independent analyst of
contending political views;
• The media revolution and expansion, with the rise of television and
business journalism and the growing importance of private corporate
advertisement revenues, as opposed to government support for media, in
influencing media economics;
• the increasing influence of the middle class and the business class in the
media has also influenced media thinking on foreign policy.
 Diaspora

2022 UN World
Migration Report: India UAE (3.5 million), the US
has the highest number (2.7 million) and Saudi
of migrants living abroad Arabia (2.5 million)
with over 18 million.
Jeffrey Benner- Structure of Decision: The Indian Foreign Policy Bureaucracy (1984)- IFP can be analysed from 5
levels- psychological, decision making, bureaucratic, national and systemic.

Vipin Narang and Paul Staniland (Institutions and worldviews in Indian Foreign Security Policy,’ India Review
(2012)- core elements in the IFP lies in the worldview of India’s policymaking elite. They argue that despite
heterogeneity across individuals, over time a strategic core has emerged in India which directs its world affairs.

Sumit Ganguly (Structure and Agency in the making of Indian Foreign Policy, ISAS Working Paper 116 (2010)- In the
changing structural context of IFP, different Prime Ministers play the role of ‘agents’ of change.

Shrikant Paranjpe (India’s strategic culture: The making of National Security Policy, 2010), - institutional and
structural pressures in the national security policy making of India in the form of different ministeries and
individual personalities

K Subrahmanyam (Perspectives in Defence Planning 1972)- “Indian Foreign Policy is always a leadership function
and more often than not, does not command a consensus.”

Chris Ogden (Indian Foreign Policy: Ambition and Transition 2014)- role of norms and focus on beliefs. He further
argues that political parties play a critical role in influencing the present day trajectory of India’s security outlook.
Daniel Markey- (Developing India’s Foreign Policy Software, Asia Policy 2009) provides a
critique of India’s foreign policymaking institutions. India needs to develop its foreign
policy ‘software’. He claims that the foreign policy establishments is a major obstacle to
India’s rise as a global power for 4 reasons
• IFS is a rather small service wing given India’s size and has stringent selection criteria
while it remains closed to external expertise.
• Public universities are poorly funded, highly bureaucratic and the quality of education
is low.
• The think tank culture in India is relatively new and lacks access to information
• Private firms and Indian media institutions are not built to conduct sustained foreign
policy research.
C.Raja Mohan (The making of Indian Foreign Policy: The role
of scholarship and Public Opinion), ISAS Working Paper No 73,
2009)- delves into the relationship between IR scholarship,
Indian public opinion and foreign policymaking in India. He
argues that unlike in other developed countries, India still lags
behind in having a permanent establishment that constitutes of
policy makers, academicians, media persons and an active
political class that churns out constructive and effective foreign
policy recommendations. What exists at the moment is an
informal network of small group of policy activists within and
outside the government.
Devesh Kapoor (Public Opinion and Indian Foreign Policy, India
Review 2009) - He argues that political elite dominates foreign
policymaking in India and mass public is poorly informed about the
same. However, the impact of public opinion is taken into account when
taking a big policy decision such as the India-US nuclear deal.

Shiv Shankar Menon- “If there is an Indian way in foreign policy, it is

marked by a combination of boldness in conception and caution in
implementation, by the dominant and determining role of the PM, by a
didactic negotiating style and most consistently, by a consciousness of
India’s destiny as a great power.”

Shiv Shankar Menon- India showed “boldness in policy conception,

caution in implementation”.
Conclusion

Thank You!!!