Not just slow. They are not delivering. Too much oxbridge, and too little relevance and impact.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently issued a sharp rebuke to the Indian Foreign Service (IFS), expressing dissatisfaction with senior diplomats for their slow, cautious, and narrow approach to international relations. The appointment of Dinesh Trivedi as India’s Ambassador to Bangladesh signaled this shift, highlighting a move toward more strategically calibrated appointments.
The core criticism centers on "diplomatic vectoring" a tendency to reduce diplomacy to routine courtesies, cultural events, and bureaucratic rituals rather than substantive strategic engagement. This inertia, observed in both veteran and younger officers, is seen as a structural fault line that hinders India’s global ambitions and doctrine of strategic autonomy.
To address this, the government is advocating for a transition to "Smart Power Diplomacy." This model demands a "whole of government" approach, where officers move beyond siloed operations to build deep, resilient networks and actively engineer pathways for India’s strategic and economic interests. The message from the top is clear: the era of "photo op diplomacy" is over. The IFS must now replace bureaucratic routine with intellectual sharpness and purposeful urgency to match India’s accelerating rise on the global stage.