NEW DELHI: To give a shot in the arm to the long-term foreign policy planning of India, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has inducted experts on a contractual basis for three years for its Policy Planning and Research Division.
The brainchild of Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, who had worked as an Under Secretary in the [Policy Planning & Research (PP&R) division, the move had its inception in 2015. It has been undertaken to overhaul the department that has traditionally been a parking lot to accommodate officials rather than to provide well-researched inputs towards framing policies to further India’s interests globally.
“Four consultants have been hired from academia and private sector on contract basis in the PP& R division. Five more consultants have been inducted for deployment in territorial divi sions on contract basis,” an official said. The recruitment was made through open advertisement to facilitate lateral entry into the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) from the non-governmental sector. The consultants hold Ph.D and M.Phil degrees. The first four consultants are Bijay Selvaraj, Satwant Khanalia, Aparna Ray Pai and Jai Bhagwan Singh.
The initiative has been appreciate by the Shashi Tharoor-led panel on external affairs that has asked the MEA to hire more experts from academia and the private sector from specific fields such as area studies, foreign languages, public relations, nuclear energy, international law, environmental studies, climatology, trade & commerce, security, etc. The committee has also implored the ministry “to explore the possibility of recruiting eminent scholars into Foreign Service, from amongst those who complete their studies abroad on scholarship.”
The initiative is the first major revamping of the PP&R division, which was formed in 1966 after MEA was questioned over inadequate planning.
The consultants will be equivalent to the Under Secretary rank. The division will work as the ministry’s window to domestic and global think tanks and will ensure that its viewpoint is being transmitted to a larger audience. It will also conduct Track 2 diplomacy.