Here’s the tragedy of India’s minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj. She’s one of the most likeable figures in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, and yet her tenure as a minister has been largely forgettable. This holds a lesson. In an increasingly complex world, India needs to stop treating the foreign ministry as a parking lot for veteran politicians with no obvious aptitude for the job.

What does it take to be a great foreign minister? For one, you need to have a deep interest in the world, and a firm sense of your country’s place in it.

I recall interviewing Jaswant Singh for an international magazine not long after India’s 1998 nuclear tests. At one point, it may have been in response to a question about economic sanctions, he explained why he was not fazed. “Charles de Gaulle used to say, ‘there is France,’” said Singh. “In the same way, there is India.” It was an elegant way to drive home the message that his government would not be bullied.

Singh shared another quality essential to a successful foreign minister: the boss’s trust. His peers around the world knew that Singh accurately reflected Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s worldview. His word carried weight in the corridors of global power because it carried weight at home.

Then there’s longevity, an asset in a job where both personal relationships and public profile matter. In Indonesia, Suharto’s legendary foreign minister, Ali Alatas, served for 11 years. Russia’s Sergei Lavrov has already been in place for 14 years. Admittedly, foreign ministers in democracies find it harder to carve out such extended tenures. Nonetheless, the principle remains valid.

Finally, a patina of polish can’t hurt. The greatest South Asian foreign minister of the past 70 years, Pakistan’s Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, combined a keen grasp of global affairs, the trust of his bosses (primarily Gen Zia ul-Haq) and longevity (he served through most of the 1980s and into the early 1990s). He also exuded a quiet erudition, aided by a reported fluency in at least seven languages, including Russian, French, German and Bengali.

On Khan’s watch as foreign minister, Pakistan successfully acquired nuclear weapons while bending the United States-funded jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan to its design. Arguably no other foreign minister in the region has played the hand he was dealt with as much finesse. (That Pakistan’s support for jihad in the 1980s ended up backfiring on it is a separate matter.)

How many of these qualities could you honestly attribute to Sushma Swaraj? Even her fiercest partisans cannot claim that she is a foreign minister steeped in international affairs. Recall Swaraj’s 2014 response to a question about the then impending Scottish referendum on independence. “A break up of the UK? God forbid, i don’t think any such possibility exists at the moment,” the evidently surprised minister blurted out.

Or take Swaraj’s Twitter exchange last month with Assamese politician Badruddin Ajmal following India’s vote against Israel and the United States on a general assembly resolution condemning the US for recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. After a thank you tweet from Ajmal, Swaraj urged him to reciprocate. “Now you vote for us,” she tweeted, implying that India’s UN vote against trusted ally Israel was motivated by domestic vote-grubbing.

Indeed, Twitter perfectly captures the mismatch between Swaraj and her ministry. A year ago, an obscure doormat depicting the Indian flag sold by a third-party reseller in Canada sent the foreign minister into a patriotic tizzy. She demanded a public apology from Amazon and threatened to rescind Indian visas for Amazon employees.

Like much of what the foreign minister does on Twitter, this outburst suggested a shrewd grasp of public sentiment. But did an eruption over something so trivial really advance India’s interests?

You see a similar privileging of political optics in Swaraj’s stream of Twitter diktats to Indian diplomats commanding them to immediately resolve trivial problems – a stolen laptop in the US, a burglary in Australia, a job lost in Saudi Arabia. A commitment to serving citizens is laudable, but is this really the best use of time for professional diplomats on whom Indian taxpayers spend a great deal of money?

Or take Swaraj’s frequent personal interventions on behalf of Pakistanis seeking medical visas. Instead of a clear policy, India boasts a medieval potentate doling out largesse in 140 characters. At a time when India is reaching for a place at the high table of global power, it comes off looking instead like a tinpot republic.

To be sure, Swaraj boasts virtues too. She harks back to a gentler era, when senior BJP leaders were still expected to maintain a sense of public decorum. She can exude a certain old-school charm. Her Hindi oratory is a delight to listen to. It’s no surprise that among professional politicians Swaraj’s 11 million Twitter followers place her behind only Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and finance minister Arun Jaitley.

You might argue that, if politics sorted such things more efficiently, Swaraj may have received a ministry better suited to her skills. This lament does not change a simple fact: If India wants to emerge as a global power, it needs to stop treating the position of foreign minister as an afterthought.

(Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj reacted to this piece with a tweet: “Let Indian taxpayers respond.”)