Jyoti Malhotra - As India attempts to understand the astounding contours of the electoral victory by the Bharatiya Janata Party last week, Prime Minister-designate Narendra Modi is said to be putting his cabinet together.
The fact that Modi is an out-of-towner, from Gujarat State, also means that the New Delhi elite has been watching the wind as well as the straws in it to decipher who will be awarded the plum portfolios, known locally as the “Big Four” - finance, home, defence and external affairs.
Foreign policy issues are usually not grist for the mill in Indian elections, so there are limited clues with which to sketch out a potential road map for Modi’s dealings with other countries.
The BJP announced Wednesday that invitations to Modi’s inauguration on May 26 went out to leaders from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, an indication of Modi’s desire to project himself as a strong global leader. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh were among those invited.
But on the campaign trail in West Bengal, Modi made a couple of derisive comments on the need to expel Bangladeshi refugees as soon as he came to power, a sensitive issue because of illegal Bangladeshi migrants crossing into neighbouring Assam and West Bengal for years, in places even changing the demography of the landscape.
Earlier in Arunachal Pradesh, in India’s northeast, which shares a border with China, Modi noted that Beijing would have to shed its “expansionist policies and forge bilateral ties with India for the peace, progress and prosperity of both nations.” India has in the past complained about China’s refusal to accept Indians from Arunachal Pradesh as Indian citizens and its insistence that Arunachal Pradesh is disputed territory.
When he was Gujarat chief minister, Modi’s interest in foreign policy was largely focused on economic issues, especially foreign direct investment. He was a regular visitor to Japan, which has invested heavily in the state. Modi’s Vibrant Gujarat summits, annual meetings meant to attract foreign investors, also courted American companies, notwithstanding the State Department’s refusal to give him a visa since 2005, in the wake of the 2002 riots in Gujarat in which nearly 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.
As to Modi’s foreign-security policy team, the questions include: And who will be the external affairs minister? The national security adviser? Will Modi bifurcate the latter job into internal security and external affairs portfolios? Will technocrats and experts be brought in to strengthen the bureaucracy’s view of the world? And what effect will these potential appointments have on India’s foreign policy?
India Ink spoke to men who have all been named as options for Modi’s security and foreign policy team.
Ajit Doval: A former chief of the Intelligence Bureau, Doval heads the list for the national security adviser’s job, a position of great power. A highly decorated intelligence officer who has advocated bold action against insurgent groups operating in India, Doval infiltrated the Arakan jungles of Burma and southern China with the secessionist Mizo National Front in India’s northeast before the group signed an accord with Delhi. He smuggled himself into the Golden Temple in Amritsar in 1988.
Doval was sent to Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 1999 to negotiate with the Taliban-led government there when an Indian Airlines plane was hijacked from Katmandu, Nepal, by Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists.
The Hindustan Times reported that on Monday, Doval met with Modi for more than an hour in Delhi, then with the senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh.
In a phone interview, Doval refused to be drawn into speculation about his playing a key role in the new government. People at the Ministry of External Affairs, who spoke on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media, said Doval was working with the ministry and Modi’s team on the matter of the heads of government from South Asian nations attending Modi’s inauguration.
Kanwal Sibal: A former foreign secretary, Sibal refused to meet with a European Union delegation in 2002 that sought to formally criticize India for the Gujarat riots, saying a foreign government had no business interfering in India’s domestic affairs, according to reports at the time in The Indian Express.
This past week, Sibal denied having received a call from Modi asking him to join his administration.  In a phone interview, however, he gave some advice for the soon-to-be prime minister, saying that Modi would have “no choice” but to be robust with Pakistan on terrorism and with China on border incursions, thereby distinguishing himself from the “passivity of the previous government.”  He also had some advice for a first visit.
“I think Japan will be a good choice for him to make his first visit. I don’t think he should go to the U.S. first,” Sibal said.  “It is neither here nor there that Obama called him or the State Department now says it will give him a visa as head of government. He should go to New York to participate in the U.N. General Assembly and meet Obama there, but there is no need for Modi to go to Washington, D.C., and beg for a lunch meeting with the U.S. president.”
In an article published Tuesday in the Indian Defence Review, Sibal wrote that Modi would prove a decisive, assertive leader on the international stage after a time when the country, he wrote, suffered from the lack of one.
“For adversaries, habituated to passive and defencive responses to deliberate provocations, the likelihood of a less tolerant Indian response under a Modi-led government might induce rethinking on their part about the price they may have to pay for aggressive or assertive policies,” he wrote.
Hardeep Singh Puri: Widely acknowledged as an able and experienced diplomat, Puri retired from the Indian Foreign Service last year. His last job was as India’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, where he rubbed shoulders with world leaders. His proximity to the B.J.P. leader Arun Jaitley is well known - both were students in Delhi during the late 1970s when then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared an emergency government.
“I have been a civil servant for 39 years. I didn’t join the B.J.P. to be a civil servant again,” Puri said in a phone interview.
In a speech on May 9 in New Delhi, Puri said the next government would urgently need to repair bilateral relationships with neighbours, as well as with the United States and China, its critical partners. He also spoke of a need to revise India’s current nuclear doctrine, which includes a pledge that India will never use nuclear weapons in a first strike.
Shyam Saran: A former foreign secretary, Saran was a highly successful ambassador to Nepal in the early 2000s, when the young Crown Prince Dipendra massacred most of his family, He played a key role in Nepal’s transition to a republic in 2006, persuading King Gyanendra to abdicate power even when then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was hesitant about India’s asking Nepal to take that step. He was an early aide to Singh, leading the negotiations on the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.
Saran is currently the director of a think tank funded by the Indian Foreign Office, Research & Information Services, and chairman of the National Security Advisory Board, which submits analysis to the government on a wide range of policy issues.
Saran emphatically denied, in a phone interview, that he had been approached by anyone in Modi’s team to take up a top job in the administration, adding, “Nor am I interested.”
Satish Chandra:A former high commissioner to Pakistan and a former deputy national security adviser, Mr. Chandra has been publicly described by Doval as a perfect fit for a top job in a Modi administration. Mr. Chandra himself has a reputation for being a hard-line diplomat, especially in Pakistan, presumably thereby enhancing his chances, especially if he is interested.
In a phone interview, however, Mr. Chandra said it was “out of the question” that he would join Modi’s team.–NY Times