With Vikram Misri, there’s no room for turf battles

In recent years, amidst the political polarisation, the productivity of the Parliament's Standing Committee on External Affairs has drastically declined. With Vikram Misri’s appointment, this is set to change

The appointment of Vikram Misri as India’s foreign secretary, which has all the appearances of a routine administrative decision, will have long-term consequences for the management of foreign policy at a critical juncture in India’s evolution as an aspirational big power. 

Since the time of Indira Gandhi as prime minister, when the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) began to grow to its present mammoth proportions, incessant rumours, gossip, titbits, and speculation about rifts between the PMO and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) have been a staple of India’s diplomatic scene.

Such stories about turf battles between these two offices acquired an institutionalised construct after Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee created the post of National Security Adviser (NSA) a quarter century ago. Vajpayee appointed Brajesh Mishra, chairman of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s foreign policy cell, as the first NSA. He became a ‘supra’ external affairs minister.

Misri will choke off such speculation and gossip once and for all because of his history of service and his persona. Contrary to the widespread misconception, although Misri is from the MEA, he was not the MEA’s man in the PMO despite spending nearly four years in the latter office on three occasions. That is the job of the director or the joint secretary from the MEA on deputation to the PMO.

Misri’s job on all these stints — except for seven months ad interim — was to constantly be by the prime minister’s side as the private secretary to India’s chief executive. In the weeks after Narendra Modi first headed the Union Cabinet in May 2014, Modi relied heavily on Misri for a smooth transition from the New Sachivalaya in Gandhinagar to 7, Race Course Road as the prime minister’s residence-cum-office was then known. Misri was in situ in the PMO when Modi arrived: he was Manmohan Singh’s private secretary and was told to continue in that job by Modi.

Insiders in government then recall that Modi came to Raisina Hill, the seat of power in the national capital, with an intention to make a mark on international affairs. It was Misri’s job to inform the MEA what to expect from the new prime minister and vice versa. Those insiders remember that people in the conventional foreign policy establishment who did not heed Misri’s advice and prescriptions on the new prime minister’s behalf perished while those who paid heed flourished.

In the first year of Modi’s prime ministership, the biggest personnel change was the curtailment of Sujatha Singh’s tenure as foreign secretary and replacing her with S Jaishankar, who went on to become the minister for external affairs. It was done without washing any dirty linen in public unlike Rajiv Gandhi’s dismissal of Foreign Secretary A P Venkateswaran at a press conference in 1987.

Misri became foreign secretary on July 15, after yet another tenure associated with the PMO. He was deputy national security adviser from January 1, 2022 until then. He has told confidantes that the two adjacent offices — the PMO and the MEA — must no longer be silos, but co-ordination offices offering a single, refined view of the global landscape to Modi and Jaishankar. With a new-look 18th Lok Sabha, Misri is the only serving IFS officer who has practised bipartisanship. In addition to three prime ministers, he has worked in the offices of two external affairs ministers. All sides of the political leadership will, therefore, be willing to do business with the new foreign secretary.

The big impact of this will be in the work of the Parliament's Standing Committee on External Affairs. Amidst the political polarisation, this committee’s productivity drastically declined in recent years. This is set to change. Misri has the Washington experience of having been India’s bipartisan liaison with both Houses of the US Congress. He was in charge of getting complex legislation on the India-US nuclear deal passed on Capitol Hill.

Foreign secretaries come in two types. One class is asked by headquarters to stay beyond the usual three years on postings. Jaishankar is one such, who stayed longer in Beijing, Prague, and Tokyo. Another class is pulled out prematurely to do firefighting on a more critical posting. Misri belongs to the second category. Except in the important stations of Islamabad, Washington, and Colombo, his postings have been cut short, some as short as five months. The most recent example was Madrid, where he sought the ambassador’s job after two hectic years in the PMO. Misri was withdrawn from Madrid and sent to Myanmar to salvage the relationship after the Indian Army’s ‘Operation Hot Pursuit’ inside Myanmar. Once that relationship stabilised, Misri was prematurely transferred to head the more important mission in Beijing.

K P Nayar has extensively covered West Asia and reported from Washington as a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH).