Advisors want diplomatic dividend from Rs 1,000 crore

Rohit Bansal

New Delhi, Aug 24: IT’S a familiar story. That various hands of the government have been giving out technical and economic assistance around the world, but they have no central processing unit, much less a strategy.

The total outflow from the coffers is some Rs 1,000 crore every year. Yet, the dividend has been one, illusive and two, unquantified.

In their first meeting with the ministry of external affairs (MEA), the newly appointed advisory group on technical and economic cooperation (ITEC) on Friday said, in the national interest, this precious resource should be optimised and “an umbrella agency” thought of on the lines of USAID or DANIDA and SIDA (of Denmark and Sweden).

A preferred option was to create “linkages” among all assistance programmes of the government, “under the broad umbrella” of the ITEC. Perhaps, even hiving it off as a seperate agency, “ITECA”, with well defined objectives.

The MEA controls ITEC with Rs 42 crore annually. The assistance is thinly spread over more than 100 countries. Add to it seperate wings within MEA itself spending on neighbouring nations in South Asia. Then ministries like science and technology, environment, non-conventional energy, etc, run their own techno-economic programmes. Strategist YS Rajan, who is scientic secretary in the office of Dr Abdul Kalam, estimates that the total annual outgo is up to Rs 1,000 crore.

Recalling some interventions in the advisory group, Dr Rajan listed “the need to include quantifiable business criteria (not just mere vague political ones)” and “the need to involve the best professionals in various cooperation programmes (rather than mediocre ones at present, given the measely compensation and patronage culture).

“Since we don’t spend our resources intelligently, and we don’t offer to the (recepient) partner nation exactly what it needs, we are not reaping any worthwhile dividends,” Dr Rajan complained.
An input from Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) chief RA Mashelkar was to make a future “ITECA” concentrate on doing a few projects, and doing them well, by employing our best professionals in various projects.

This, Dr Mashelkar, is said to have stressed includes “knowledge-based industries, where ‘ITECA’ can be a portal providing links at people-to-people and private sector-to-private sector levels. It should, no doubt, have all information and resources available with different agencies giving out technical and economic cooperation”.

Earlier, speaking to The Financial Express after inaugurating the advisory group, foreign secretary Chokila Iyer said, “Economic diplomacy is, indeed, the future component of our relationships with partner nations, but the political component continues to remain important.” “We do have issues in ITEC, say, on rigid and old rules that govern personnel who visit us. These we hope to streamline once the advisory inputs are with us,” she said.