The Indian media in the past hollered for your blood, especially after you said Indian politicians should stop "tilting at windmills".
I have a reputation for plain speaking and that is not always appreciated here. India is a country where quite often form takes the place of substance, but I felt that it was right to tell it how it is and that has always been my way. On the particular question of tilting at windmills, it is a term taken from literature, and I dare say some people failed to catch it. But there is a serious point behind it, which is that I do feel that in India quite often more time is spent criticising other people or rejecting their suggestions than coming forward with suggestions of one's own. And I think Indian diplomacy would benefit from coming forward with some suggestions from time to time rather than simply rubbishing everybody else's.
Do you think the MEA does not handle criticism adequately?
What I would say for the MEA is that it is grossly understaffed. If India wants to run a global diplomacy, which it does, it needs more officials in South Block. For instance, the joint secretary who deals with the UK deals with 27 countries—this is crazy. So there is an enormous strain on the officials before you get into the question of attitudes and policies. Secondly, I do think that the MEA needs to improve its economic activities; the British foreign service has changed dramatically since the war and we now devote something like 33 per cent to economic and commercial work and attach enormous importance to it. Also, I think the policy planning capability needs to be jacked up in order to be able to spot trends and factor them into the policy-making process. There is a tendency to fall back on old non-aligned nostrums which I don't think are valid any more as a basis for policy. This is allied to the nuclear question, the economic question and the regional cooperation question. There is a slight tendency to look back rather than forward.
Do you think that the Indian media was unfair to you?
Well, a senior envoy has to take what he gets, it's for the Indian media to make its own judgements about what it prints. But I don't recognise myself in quite a lot of what has been written about me.
How do you view your tenure here?
Well this is one of the top jobs in British diplomacy and anyone who is lucky to have it feels very privileged to have been chosen and I feel that privilege intensely. Not least since everybody knows my father was similarly privileged 30-odd years ago.
What went wrong during the queen's visit last year?
I think it mainly went wrong in the perception that was both gathered in and then deployed by the media at both ends. There were sensitivities—we were in a funny kind of way more at ease with the 50th anniversary than India was itself. We were in a mood of rejoicing but I don't think that was true of India. But those participating in the visit relished the various activities that took place. I don't regard it as a fiasco. And anyone who went in the queen's motorcade, and all the waving and clapping and cheering...one can't forget that kind of thing.
Various people in the media and in the government have described the queen's visit and what followed as a very low point in Indo-British ties .
Well I don't really accept the definition...the queen's visit was magnificent. She enjoyed it, the speech she made at the Rashtrapati Bhawan was welcomed by the people there.The visit to Amritsar was outstanding—it was moving, it was colourful, it was dramatic. It was successful in my view. The media (both the Indian and the British) seemed determined to reduce it in size, but actually it was tremendous.
But even the government at that time and the MEA said that Indo-British ties had suffered.
I think they were wrong. They had their own reasons to take the line that they did.
How, in you opinion, can Indo-British ties be improved?
Well, I think anybody will tell you that India is not an easy country to deal with, particularly at a time of political uncertainty. There is a marked lack of continuity at the moment in Indian politics.
"In India quite often more time is spent criticising other people or rubbishing their suggestions than coming forward with suggestions of one's own."
Are you satisfied with the way things went during your tenure?
Any high commissioner or ambassador who has been visited by his monarch and other high officials can't but think that the period has been one filled with important manifestations of Indo-British togetherness. So, of course, it was not comfortable for me personally to be traduced in the media in the way that I was.
What are your future plans?
I have decided to leave the foreign service. When you have been high commissioner in India and ambassador in Saudi Arabia, there is very little left that would satisfy an aspiring envoy; so I have decided to try my hand at something else. I will be taking up a position in the private sector next year. That is still under wraps, but I will be involved in a sector that will allow me to have contacts with both Saudi Arabia and India.
How would you compare your postings in Saudi Arabia and India?
I don't think that you can compare them. Saudi Arabia does not have the kind of colonial backdrop that affects everything that any high commissioner does in India. So if I am forced to make a distinction it would be that the position of Britain in India is so special—some people take that negatively, some take that positively, some people take it negatively and positively in a schizophrenic way.
Does your departure from the foreign service have anything to do with your stint in India?
It has to do with the fact that I have run out of options.
India wants a place in the sun, do you think that the nuclear tests brought us any closer to that goal?
We all want our place in the sun. But I think that what has happened in the last 50 years is that access to the sun is something that is not a factor of military strength, so much as a factor of economic strength. The nuclear issue really emerged from World War II. But what has become clear since then is that the real motor of human development is economic; that is why I don't think that the nuclear tests have brought India any closer to a place in the sun. India by its size and position deserves to be a major world player, but it won't be that by nuclear tests, it will be when its GDP per head gets closer to the GDP of other countries at comparable stages of development. So I am in the camp that regrets the nuclear tests—I don't think they were necessary and I don't think that they resolve India's fundamental problem which is an economic, not military, one.
"I don't think the N-tests have brought India any closer to a place in the sun. They don't resolve its fundamental problem, which is economic."
So what would you advise the Indian government at this time?
I believe the economic reform process must continue...the only way India can increase the well-being of its own people is to continue with disinvestment and find ways to objectify that capital into the public sector, particularly infrastructure, education and health. Another thing is that we have discovered that regional cooperation is the best way forward in today's world. I would strongly urge India to press ahead with the consolidation of SAARC.
Did a change of government in India improve things for you?
Well, it's long been British policy to cooperate with democratic countries and to accept and build on whatever result democracy produces. So there is an openness to the BJP-led government just as there was to the UF before that. It's no secret that the decision to conduct the nuclear tests made the relationship more difficult. I think it's also forgotten here, it is not only Indian public opinion that makes the world go round, there are others, so that certainly made it more difficult. Beyond that, if there is a single factor that has perhaps taken the gloss off the relationship right now, it is the economic downturn in India. The Indo-British partnership can't run faster than the Indian economic situation allows it to.
Do you have any misgivings about the Indian press?
Well, this applies to the press the world over, there is too much focus on little things. What has hurt me, if anything has, is the portrait that has been painted of me in some sections of the Indian media which has no bearing on the reality. Your magazine describes me as the last of the sahibs and says I am a hunting, shooting, fishing type. I never hunt, I have never shot, and I have never fished. I am paid to take the slings and arrows of media fortune, but I would prefer them to be soundly based, rather than unsoundly based.
Were you ever afraid that your knighthood might be taken away?
No.
What has been your most memorable experience in India?
I would put the queen's visit to Amritsar. It was stunning.
