A day after the government 'curtailed her tenure' as foreign secretary, Sujatha Singh resigned and took early retirement from the Indian Foreign Service. In a parting letter to her former colleagues, she stressed on the 'institutional strength' of the ministry of external affairs and the importance of how institutions 'interface and coordinate with each other'. This is being read in diplomatic circles as a veiled reference to the interaction between the PMO and MEA, where the former is understood to exercise dominance.
Singh said she had been 'privileged' to serve the IFS for 38 years, a service she considered the best in terms of professionalism and competence. "What we do possess in the ministry of external affairs are great institutional strengths." It is this strength, she claimed, which had enabled MEA to rise up to challenges - 'to prepare, to organise, to deliver and to follow up, on what has perhaps been the most charged, and indeed the most successful, calendar of any new government's post election foreign engagements.' She said the FS plays a critical role in 'being the main point of interface with the political leadership.'
Returning to the theme of institutions, Singh wrote that while individuals play a critical role in building institutions, they are not bigger than institutions. 'It can never be about individuals. It has to be about institutions and how institutions interface and coordinate with each other."
Official sources praised the 'dignified letter'. They pointed out that the letter - and its reference to the government's foreign policy engagements - was an effort to own the recent successes. "But she should have read the writing on the wall earlier", said one source.
South Block was abuzz on Thursday with anecdotes and instances which pointed out that she was out of favour. Sources said it had begun early on, as the PM was well aware of the circumstances of her appointment. Manmohan Singh had wanted to appoint S Jaishankar as the FS but the party is understood to have intervened in favour of Singh, whose father was former IB chief T V Rajeshwar, considered close to the Gandhi family.
The PM, sources said, was not happy at the quality of advice he was getting from the FS. He found her lacking in her grasp of economic diplomacy. There was, in the PMO's view, absence of follow up after Modi's successful high level engagement with Japan PM Shinzo Abe. A diplomat said, "There wasn't any specific instance. It had been building up and she had become increasingly irrelevant. Everyone knew PMO was calling the shots." With the appointment of Jaishankar, he said, there would be greater 'institutional balance'. "It is an irony that the institutional interface she refers to will become stronger now that she is gone."
Recommended article: Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service - if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at http://ift.tt/jcXqJW.
from Top Stories - Google News http://ift.tt/1Buj60Q
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment