PM Gets Diplomat in MoD to Bolster Defence Ties

Prime Minister Narendra Modi & NSA Ajith Doval

NEW DELHI: The Narendra Modi government has appointed a diplomat to occupy a vital post concerning international cooperation under the Ministry of Defence (MoD), which has been manned for the last 8 years by IAS officers without expertise in the area that occasionally led to avoidable embarrassments.

Shambhu Kumaran—a 1995-batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer and an expert on China and Japan—will be joining the MoD as Joint Secretary, Planning and International Cooperation (PIC), a key position that primarily handles coordination of defence cooperation with foreign nations. He is currently posted as Joint Secretary, Eurasia, under the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

The decision to reappoint a diplomat was taken at the highest level after the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) sent a note to the defence ministry last month.

According to highly placed sources, the PMO was unhappy with the way matters related to defence cooperation were being handled by the bureaucrats. Their inability to appreciate and understand international relations, and a lack of global vision had created several faux pas, embarrassing the government.

The office of the Joint Secretary, PIC, deals with matters related to bilateral and multilateral defence cooperation activities with foreign countries. The key post also looks after defence perspective planning, policy and strategy, international cooperation, signing of agreements with other countries and matters relating to holding meetings of joint groups set up under the provisions of MoUs/agreements.

Since January 2007, this office fell into the hands of the IAS lobby after IFS officer Debnath Shaw was transferred to his parent cadre. Since his departure, three IAS officers—Smita Nagraj of Tamil Nadu cadre and her successors Navin Chaudhary and Suresh Kumar, both from the Jammu and Kashmir cadre—have occupied the post.

AK Antony, then defence minister under the UPA government, failed to address the issue despite defence cooperation taking a backseat and causing delays to acquisition plans of foreign players. Sources in the South Block maintained that lack of defence diplomacy was responsible for goof-ups on the part of IAS officers.

In 2011, a foreign delegation held a high-level meeting with army officers, without the MoD being kept in the loop. This prompted Smita Nagraj to issue a terse circular to officials saying that communications between foreign defence delegations and armed forces officials would have to be routed through her office, probably as a face-saver.

The Indian Navy had participated in multilateral naval exercises in Malabar in 2007, going against the Congress government’s stated policy. In 2007, navies of India, the US, Singapore, Australia and Japan flexed muscles in the Bay of Bengal leading to a perception of an ‘Asian-Nato’ axis to contain China.

As a damage control bid, the UPA government never allowed the Indian navy to participate in multilateral exercises again.

Also in May this year, when German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen visited South Block, not even a single officer from the MoD, let alone her counterpart Manohar Parrikar or his deputy Rao Inderjit Singh, was present to receive her and honour protocol.

A top officer maintained that during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s foreign visits, the MoD officials had to depend on the MEA for briefings. “The return of a diplomat to the MoD will not only strengthen cooperation with the foreign affairs ministry, but also put the country’s defence vision in a much clearer perspective,” said an MoD official.

Officials pointed out that Shambhu Kumaran was one of the ‘rising stars’ of the MEA. A fluent speaker of German, Kumaran has held varied portfolios, having been director in the East Asia desk covering China, Japan and the Korean peninsula.