Go back to how it was
Strategic Analyst
The most important lesson to be learned from the evacuation of Indian students from Ukraine — and the preceding massive Covid-related rescue operation of Indians, globally known as Vande Bharat — is that there is a strong case for reviving the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MoIA). This dynamic ministry was disbanded in 2016 and its mandate was integrated into the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).
South Block, the MEA headquarters, can either be a consular agency or it can be in the vanguard of diplomacy.
Governments, by their nature, reduce people to files and shelve them. Thereafter, they are mere application or representation numbers on pieces of paper, upgraded in recent years to tracking numbers on computers. This is not peculiar to India, but common to governments all over the world. The MoIA was the only ministry in the entire Indian system, which dealt with people as people and dealt with Indians not merely as a job.
For that reason, its spirit lives on eight years after the MoIA was shut down and its well-meaning and welfare measures became memory. If evidence of this was needed, it was aplenty during the evacuations out of war-torn Ukraine. Take a look at these messages from the families of boys and girls, mostly medical students, who found themselves in conflict zones, only to be misguided by agents who took them to Ukraine in the first place.
‘You are a God for NRI, saving their life without power and position, no expectation, doing Nobel (sic!) work, great woman of our era.’ This message was received by Arathi Krishna, now a private citizen in Bengaluru, who was once among the most people-focused executors of many welfare initiatives, when the MoIA was in operation. Krishna received this message after her incessant, targeted individual phone calls to students from Karnataka in one of the Ukrainian towns under Russian bombardment. She kept up their morale when a personal touch from back home with pretensions of authority and assurance was needed. Krishna stepped into a void which was left by the Indian embassy in Kyiv, which merely issued advisories and washed its hands of the matter.
As the war raged and Indian students became desperate, Shashi Tharoor, the Lok Sabha member from Thiruvananthapuram, enquired after the niece of one of his constituents, who was trying to get out of Kyiv and go to safety in Slovakia. Tharoor received this reply: ‘Not OK, harrowing experiences is what she is having for last four days, Just now heading towards the border of Slovakia. My niece got out of Kyiv yesterday somehow. Absolutely no assistance from embassy. She has been calling the embassy from the day of the invasion and they were just not answering or disconnecting the call. Even the Opposition is not putting any pressure, including the stalwarts of the Indian National Congress. One lady, Dr Arathi Krishna, is the only hope to us in this time who is making efforts to help as many as possible in her personal capacity. She has been coordinating with my niece and me on daily basis. Sad, very sad.’
Jasbir Mongia is a Person of Indian Origin (PIO) in Washington, who is active in the Sikh community on the east coast of the US. When the MoIA existed, he was associated with that ministry through its designated officers at the Indian embassy in Washington. Mongia and other members of the Sikh diaspora sent out the following message and a GPS location link globally: ‘If any known acquaintances stuck in Ukraine, ask them to reach Poland gurdwara. They will get accommodation, food and all support. All are welcome. Location: Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, Warsaw. Contact +48 602 666 666.’ A large number of evacuees, even non-Indians, took advantage of the gurdwara hospitality.
EP Teki, a veteran of the airlift of Indians during the first Gulf War — an evacuation which made it to the Guinness Book of Records — says nothing gladdens the hearts of evacuees pining to get home from conflict zones as the sight of a cup of hot soup or fresh rotis and steaming dal when they reach a reception centre for repatriation after dodging bullets and risking a drive through mined roads or IEDs. Teki was known for years as the most people-oriented officer in the capital’s Shastri Bhavan, the seat of several union ministries. He loathed what most government servants do: pushing files. His contacts in the global Indian diaspora and the media are the stuff of many stories.
After the MoIA was merged into the MEA, Sushma Swaraj, the minister who held charge of both ministries till then, opted to be the de facto Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, choosing to delegate the duties of the Minister for External Affairs to the Foreign Secretary and three other MEA Secretaries. Young Indians who joined the IFS with aspirations of becoming diplomats saw their ambitions evaporate as they were reduced to consular officials. A senior Indian diplomat in Houston subsequently told me that the MEA had ‘become the biggest service delivery organisation in the world’.
Incumbent External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has restored the foundational functions for which the MEA was created. However, South Block, the MEA headquarters, cannot adequately fulfil two roles with equal efficiency. It can either be a consular agency or it can be in the vanguard of Indian diplomacy. The sprawling size and geographical diversity of the Indian diaspora demand the resurrection of the MoIA to deal with eventualities like evacuations and the welfare of NRIs and PIOs.
Tailpiece: A spillover advantage of sending an experienced diplomat-turned-minister to supervise evacuations — instead of mere politicians — is that the country gets collateral benefits from such unique cabinet presence. India has had no Ambassador in Hungary for many months, even though the Ukraine crisis has been looming for a year. Hardeep Singh Puri, the minister who brought Indian students out of Ukraine via Budapest, repaired the bilateral relationship somewhat. The minister relied heavily on the resources and goodwill for his wife, Lakshmi Puri, who was a popular Indian Ambassador in Hungary.
