'Diplomats should never forget their roots, their background'

Venu Rajamony is an Indian diplomat with more than three decades of experience in the foreign service. He served as a Press Secretary to the President of India between 2012 and. He has also had various stints abroad, including in Hong Kong, China, Dubai and most recently, the Netherlands.

He speaks with DH's Prajwal Suvarna to discuss various aspects of a career in the foreign services.

What prompted you to join the Indian Foreign Service?

Like most other people, I joined the civil services because of my father, who had appeared for the service services but had not made it. He was very keen that his son become a civil servant.

So, he put the idea into my mind at a very early age.

During my Bachelors in Political Science at the Maharaja's College in Ernakulam, I had an opportunity to travel to Canada and some other countries through the NCC and that put a travel bug into me. That also increased my interest with regard to foreign countries, foreign policy and foreign cultures.

After my Bachelors I went on to Jawaharlal Nehru University, where I found everybody is appearing for the civil services and many were getting qualified too.

And that is when my desire became a little more concrete. After two years at JNU, I came to Kochi and joined the Indian Express as a staff correspondent. It was while working for the Indian Express that I started serious studies and preparation and appeared for the exam.

I pursued an MA in International Studies at JNU, so I chose foreign services as a career and became a diplomat.

What is the big misconception about IFS that young aspirants have?

One misconception is probably that it is too difficult. A lot of people nowadays do not want to leave India or prefer working in India.

The foreign service is one of a kind experience which you cannot have elsewhere. People think there is nothing substantive about the foreign service — that it is all being on a cocktail circuit and having a good time. That is not correct at all. It is a lot of hard work.

Not many people have the opportunity to meet a foreign service officer, or interact with them, or visit an embassy and see how it works. Even if you visit an embassy outside, you only see their passport and visa section and are not privy to the inner workings of the services.

As an IFS officer, you need to know your own country well. You need to know the country to which you are going. You need to learn a foreign language. You are also dealing with a wide diversity of issues, ranging from disarmament to development to issuing passports and visas, to issues of nuclear security.

This makes the job extremely interesting. And this is also a small service and you are essentially working in Delhi at the Ministry of External Affairs. So the influence at the higher levels, whether it is with the Prime Minister or President etc is very high.

What other routine work takes place in the IFS?

It is a fascinating exercise being in the foreign services, where you sit with representatives of hundreds of other countries to arrive at a consensus. You present your country's views, to see how compromise can be made.

There is a broad mandate. And before you give a final approval, you always check with your boss, who is the ambassador. If the ambassador needs any clearance, they check with the Ministry of External Affairs. If the Ministry needs any clearance, they check with the Prime Minster.

Could you tell us a bit about your own career? What lessons has being a diplomat taught you?

Work varies from place to place. If you take me for example, I have worked in China, US, Dubai, and Netherlands. More recently, I have worked with the President of India.

All these experiences are different from each other — there is little that you would call routine or boring.

In Hong Kong, I started learning Chinese. I also went on a sabbatical to the US for six months with a think tank with Washington DC.

I have also worked with the Foreign Minister, with the Ministry of Finance in the Department of Economic Affairs.

Throughout your career, you need to have and retain a healthy curiosity in everything around you. You also need a passion for India, to talk about India and to try and bring the best lessons from abroad to India.

And of course, you will need to be always measured in your words, learn to disagree without being disagreeable. Put across your views with strength and reason but in the nicest language. And you need to both learn and enjoy working in a multicultural office.

What needs to change in the IFS in the modern day?

I think the IFS has to keep abreast with the changing times. We have to be more tech savvy, we have to be more integrated with the private sector. We also need better linkages with ministries within India and the state governments. All of this is happening, but more of it would be better.

The foreign services is also one of the smallest services. Considering the size of our country, and our ambition to be a major power, we need to increase the size of our service to a much larger number. I think China is three or four times the size of our service. Even countries like Brazil have more people. So we need to increase human resources.

The IFS is often associated with elitism or sophistication. Some perspective on this

People associate it with elitism because the service is so small, and you are not seeing them in day-to-day life.

And normally you mingle and go with the highest echelons of society wherever you live — the crème de la crème. So that automatically gives you sophistication.

You don't need to go to Doon school or St Stephens to qualify for foreign service. You can study anywhere and come from any background and get into the foreign service. But once you are working in the foreign service, to work well, you must learn to work with sophistication — the way you behave and interact with others.

But it is important for an officer to keep in mind that once they comes back to India, they are just an ordinary citizen.

It is only abroad that they are a diplomat. And they should never forget their roots, the background from which they came.

Is the character of the foreign service changing?

I think the diversity of people entering the service is wonderful. It is necessary. Everyone should have equal access. And people coming from the foreign service should not be the privilege of elites in Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata.

So that is a good development. But ultimately, we need to have people who have an interest and passion for the job. If there is an independent selection for foreign service, we would have more people with an interest in the service competing.

This is a difficult decision, that has been much debated in the foreign ministry — whether we should separate the foreign services from the other Civil Services and have an independent selection procedure.

The conventional wisdom so far has been that it is useful to continue to stay with all the other services.

Once you join the Foreign Service, what happens is because you spend most of your time abroad, you lose your connections with people in India. And there your batchmates network in the IAS and IPS is extremely useful in the long run.

Could you throw some light on hardship postings?

There are probably more hardship postings than comfortable ones. People go and work in Afghanistan. I lost a very close friend of mine in a bomb attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul in 2008. Pakistan is a difficult place, so is China.

In many other countries, sometimes there is no law and order. Sometimes there are coup d'etats, earthquakes, upheavals of all kinds.

So, there is more than a fair share of hardship in a life as a foreign service officer. But even within that hardship, the government of India and foreign governments make sure that diplomats are well looked after.

Any advice to aspiring IFS officers?

These are wonderful careers, the foreign service in particular. I would encourage anybody with an adventurous spirit and the willingness to travel and learn new things to take the foreign service.

It requires dedication, skills of articulation, verbal and written. And Indian diplomats are considered among the best in the world. They distinguished themselves through their hard work and identify the interests of India, as well as developing countries and other Asian countries and articulated them, fought for them, and argued for them.

So it is a challenging and rewarding career and I would encourage people to go into it with a full heart.

(Path to Civils is a fortnightly series featuring interviews with exemplary officers from the civil services who share their perspectives in prearing for the exams and working in government service)