Shashi Tharoor’s exit from the cabinet last week has evoked mixed reactions among the nation’s commentariat. Some have decried the machinations of the Congress apparatchiks in making Tharoor a sacrificial lamb and have defended Tharoor as breath of fresh air in the stilted environs of Delhi politics. There are those who have accused Tharoor of being callous in his handling of his personal profile – not making friends who could have helped him in his crisis and pretending that he was above the nitty-gritty of daily political grind. Then there are some who see a potentially great leader in Tharoor eventually, despite his recent fall from grace. What is striking in most of these observations is how devoid they are of any discussion of Tharoor’s contribution or lack thereof to the job that he was supposed to be handling in the Ministry of External Affairs. That’s because there isn’t much there to talk and write about.
As someone who had viewed Tharoor’s entry into the MEA with some anticipation, it was extremely disheartening to be a witness to an inglorious end to the Tharoor saga. He was an outside professional who was supposed to rejuvenate Indian politics and Indian foreign policy. He was a thinker who was supposed to elevate ideas in the realm of policy-making by disseminating new and interesting ideas to shake up the intellectual sloth in the system. He was an exemplar who was to make a strong case for lateral entry into politics and for professional expertise in government.
India’s emergence as a major power is still a matter of potential. It is often assumed that India has the necessary institutional wherewithal to translate its growing economic and military capabilities into global influence even though the Indian State continues to suffer from weak administrative capacity in most areas of policy-making.
On foreign policy and national security issues, state institutions often do not work because the governments of the day do not want them to work. So, the onus falls on the bureaucracy which is not organised to think strategically. Moreover, it remains insular, not interested in making use of wider knowledge base. It is equally the case that a wider culture of non-governmental academics and think-tanks is largely absent. India’s higher education system remains weak in producing the kind of output that would enhance India’s ability to project itself and its values on the global stage more potently. A dose of outside experts is one way to remedy this situation.
So when Tharoor contested elections as a member of the Congress Party, it was clear that he will assume some responsibility in the MEA and that was enough to generate some optimism about the future of Indian foreign policy. He had positioned himself as a champion of “New India,” of the aspiring Indian middle classes who are supposedly fed up with politics as usual. We were told he wanted to be change the system from within. And his weapon of choice in this revolution was to be Twitter. He had more than 700, 000 followers and the more feathers he ruffled, the more popular he became. But for a party that had to push an ambitious agenda in the Parliament, he became an embarrassment.
Yet when one looks back now, one is hard pressed to find any major contribution from Tharoor on the foreign policy front. At best, it can be pointed out that he had plans to revive the Policy Planning Division of the MEA to promote strategic thinking in the Indian foreign policy establishment. What subsequently happened to this plan remains unknown. It also remains unclear if this was a mere gimmick or part of a sustained process aimed at revamping the MEA. Tharoor seemed to have been interested on a whole range of issues but somehow foreign policy never seemed like a top priority. It always seemed he was more interested in competing with Amitabh Bachchan’s blog and Shah Rukh Khan’s tweets than in doing what he was supposed to do. It may very well be that he did in fact make a substantial contribution behind-the-scenes. But given the chaos that seems to have pervaded Indian foreign policy over the last few months, that’s not saying much. Apparently there used to be no pending files on his desk. If this can be seen as an accomplishment, then surely Throoor did well.
Tharoor has been described as one of the rising stars of Indian politics and he may yet redeem himself given that he seems to have the support of Rahul Gandhi, the most powerful individual in the Indian polity today. Yet Tharoor’s exit from the cabinet remains a tragedy on multiple fronts. It’s a tragedy for the government as it seemed to have lost a thinking member of the cabinet. It’s a tragedy for his supporters as he failed to make a case that outside experts can really make a difference in the policy world. It’s a tragedy for Tharoor himself as he surely would have liked to be remembered for something more than a few random pointless tweets.
If in less than a year the UPA-II seems to have lost all momentum and its political capital seems to be getting rapidly depleted, then a twittering Tharoor owes some of the responsibility. Rather than focusing on real issues in Indian foreign policy, Tharoor seemed busy in trying to become a part of the system. In the end, not only did the system not embrace him but he also lost his outsider tag. Tharoor has emerged out of this crisis as a quintessential insider and for those who had placed their hopes on Tharoor, this is his biggest failure. As for Indian foreign policy, it will continue to drift, with or without Tharoor.
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Harsh Pant teaches at King’s College London
