(This story originally appeared in on Mar 26, 2014)

NEW DELHI: Election campaigns generally steer clear of foreign policy, and this campaign season is no different. Except for expressing concern about Indian soldiers being beheaded on the LoC with Pakistan or fears of terrorism, political leaders prefer to engage in local navel gazing.



Therefore, it was significant that in a recent speech, BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi called for a complete overhaul of the ministry of external affairs (MEA). Speaking at the India Economic Convention in New Delhi, where he shared his ideas of reviving India's economic growth, Modi said the MEA needed to completely reinvent itself.



"It seems to me that our overseas missions' primary task is to file long reports, their job seems to be to gather information about their host country, write political and security analyses about the country's old friends and new. These despatches are sent to headquarters where they are read by the relevant division," Modi said.



Stating that this practice was justified in a previous day and age, he said in the 21st century, both foreign policy and the foreign office needed to change direction. Diplomats, he said, needed to be more alive to issues like trade facilitation and promoting Indian business abroad, basically acting as force multipliers for the Indian economy.



Modi's focus on the foreign office is significant, because he suggests that India has to engage more enthusiastically with the global economy. Modi's views clearly stem from personal experience. In Gujarat in the past decade, Modi has successfully conducted diplomacy with key countries like China, Japan, Canada, Israel and Denmark, among others.



Modi is not wrong, and interestingly, shares this view with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. In his speeches to the annual jamboree of Indian ambassadors, Singh has repeatedly stressed on making economic diplomacy the bedrock of Indian foreign policy. Some of this is already being practiced by the MEA. For the past few years, diplomats have made a more forceful pitch for Indian business overseas.



Having said that though, the fundamental basis for Indian foreign policy is not economics, but security, and one cannot lighten focus on security issues, given the unstable security environment India finds itself in. To bring economic foreign policy to the top of the agenda, any government would have to effect a policy change. That change would have to sometimes walk a tightrope between business and security considerations. This would be most in evidence in India's relations with say, China. China is an important economic partner, but India's security apprehensions often override business considerations. Moreover, China's own approach to Indian business is coloured by security considerations.



On the other hand, India-Japan ties are predicated on strong economic considerations, particularly in the area of facilitating Japanese investment into India. But here MEA is powerless, as a ministry, it is incapable of opening doors for Japanese business in different states because of the nature of its job description. In an effort to increase MEA's influence in the states, foreign secretary Sujatha Singh recently called in all state representatives for an MEA familiarization exercise.





In November 2013, Modi spoke about promoting "paradiplomacy" at a policy speech in Chennai, a popular concept in some countries like Canada, Brazil, Germany, even Australia. This is a practice where states play a growing role in foreign policy, particularly economic diplomacy. Witness the robust trade promotion by Quebec (Canada), New South Wales (Australia), Sao Paulo (Brazil), etc. In the Indian context, Tamil nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra or West Bengal can all play their part. In his speech, Modi promised to make that a key part of his global engagement.



But what Modi failed to address, a failing he shares with the current government is that for effective economic diplomacy, there has to be a pool of skilled people in central and state governments and private sector. Without a creation of such skills in the right place, Indian diplomats expected to push Indian business will continue to flounder.