Unheralded and without fanfare, India is emerging as a conference superpower. In the year of the G20 in New Delhi, the process of consolidating India’s position as a global conference organiser on an infinite range of themes—from technology and climate action to geopolitics and geoeconomics—will gain further consolidation, bringing collateral benefits to many aspects in the country’s destiny.
A fortnight ago, in Pune, Infosys founder N R Narayana Murthy was virtually mobbed at a geoeconomic conference for selfies with the celebrated entrepreneur. In the crowd, which wanted to be photographed with Murthy, were two finance ministers from abroad. Murthy had just finished a freewheeling “fireside chat”, touching on every possible subject of interest to a large audience at the Asia Economic Dialogue (AED), organised by the Ministry of External Affairs along with the Pune International Centre, and inaugurated by India’s top political diplomat, S Jaishankar.
The AED was convening physically after a gap of three years, interrupted by the pandemic, when it was held virtually: it was not the same either in impact or in influence, although last year, corporate titan Mukesh Ambani had taken the role remotely that Murthy did in person this year. At the AED in 2021, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla filled that role, also virtually.
“We are hoping to be the Davos of the East, eventually,” says Gautam Bambawale, convenor of the AED, former ambassador to China and Bhutan and high commissioner to Pakistan. Davos, where the World Economic Forum has been held with world political leaders in attendance since 1974, has shaped global industry and economic agendas significantly. “Our aim is to bring thought leaders in industry, government and the academia from all over the world, along with India, to Pune to brainstorm.”
The MEA’s Policy Planning and Research Division is in overdrive this year, organising a plethora of international conferences either directly or by supporting Indian think tanks which take the lead in putting together conclaves.
The year 2016 was when India embarked on a long-term plan to regularly bring global decision-makers and influencers to its shores via the conference route. That year, the first Raisina Dialogue was hosted in New Delhi by India’s foreign secretary and the chairman of the Observer Research Foundation as a small talking shop.
The latest Dialogue in this series last weekend has grown into a behemoth: the four Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) foreign ministers, the Russian foreign minister and the Italian and Indian prime ministers addressed the eighth Raisina Dialogue, which dominated news headlines for three days.
The Global Technology Summit last November in New Delhi, organised jointly by the MEA and Carnegie India, also began in 2016. Its focus has been on the changing nature of technology and geopolitics, with the sub-text of how India can garner advantage from bringing together industry experts, scientists, policymakers and other stakeholders from the world over. Around the same time, the AED was conceived as a flagship event to prepare India to deal with the emerging international trading system, post-Covid global trade and finance dynamics, and resilient global growth in a post-pandemic world. This year’s theme for this conference was ‘Asia and the Emerging World Order’. The MEA describes the annual India-US Forum as “the most consequential annual gathering dedicated to India-United States of America cooperation”. It is convened by the MEA and the Ananta Centre, a leadership development and open dialogue policy forum in New Delhi. India’s drivers of conference diplomacy have lately been quick to step into new opportunities as changing global circumstances throw them up. Thus, the Indian Ocean Conference was launched in 2016 with yet another think tank, the India Foundation. This annual conference is the only Indian global conclave that is always held abroad, in an Indian Ocean country.
Meanwhile, there is a twist in the tale within India’s internal diplomacy as a result of this aggressive promotion of international conferences within the country. The MEA’s Policy Planning and Research Division has become a coveted posting for younger, middle-level diplomats.
The reason is not far to seek: its most famous joint secretary ever was K R Narayanan in 1969, who eventually rose to be president. The present foreign secretary, Vinay Kwatra, and an incumbent MEA secretary, Saurabh Kumar, were both joint secretaries for Policy Planning along the way in their careers. Chokila Iyer, India’s first woman foreign secretary, also held this job. The incumbent joint secretary is Sumit Seth, who has successfully shepherded the most number of global Indian conferences in history.
As a consequence of the rising importance of conference diplomacy, the American concept of the “revolving door” in statecraft has come to be accepted in India now. This concept in the US involves experts and specialists moving into the government in critical roles, and when the party in power changes, they return to think tanks or industry organisations or become pundits on television.
India’s most famous “revolving door” strategist has been Ajit Doval, the present National Security Adviser (NSA). He was director of the Intelligence Bureau, then founded the Vivekananda International Foundation (VIF), a think tank supportive of the BJP, and served as its director until his appointment as NSA soon after Narendra Modi became prime minister. The present director of VIF is Arvind Gupta who was deputy NSA during three years of Modi’s tenure. Before that, he was director general of the government think tank, the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), which ranks among the top 50 think tanks in the world. Via the revolving door, retired Ambassador Sujan Chinoy is the present director general of IDSA.
Another revolving door appointee is retired ambassador Vijay Thakur Singh, who is director general of the Indian Council for World Affairs, a think tank created through an Act of Parliament. Yet another government think tank in New Delhi is Research and Information System for Developing Countries, whose objective is capacity-building among developing countries. It has also been headed by eminent thinkers who came in through the revolving door.
K P Nayar
Strategic Analyst