Diplomacy now demands a fusion no bureaucracy can supply: political conviction that carries a mandate, domain expertise that can smell the true cost of a concession and world experience that commands a room.
The counterpart across the table today is a trade negotiator, defence planner, tech entrepreneur, sovereign fund, central banker or head of government. The envoy who answers them must be prepared to roll politics, finance and world affairs into the same breath.
In April, India’s government appointed former Union minister Dinesh Trivedi as High Commissioner to Bangladesh, the first political appointment of its kind under the Narendra Modi government.
The significance lies less in the individual than in the question: should an ambassadorship remain the culmination of single-career track, or should India choose every envoy for the capability each mission demands?
India has been here before. The early Republic drew on eminence when the task demanded it—think of S. Radhakrishnan, Vijayalakshmi Pandit, K.M. Panikkar, V.K. Krishna Menon, M.C. Chagla, Nani Palkhivala, Karan Singh and I.K. Gujral—while treating the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) as the system’s spine rather than its ceiling.
That instinct should not be romanticized and the idea is not to diminish the IFS. Its institutional memory, negotiating craft and relationships built over decades are assets that the country cannot casually discard. The IFS should remain the backbone of India’s diplomatic architecture. But a spine cannot be the entire skeleton.
Consequential talks today run through semiconductor supply chains, export-control carve-outs, data flows, defence co-production, investment screening and technology standards. Treaties are drafted in detail, covering tariff schedules and technology annexes long before they are announced as political statements. The communiqué is the polish on a structure built by expertise.
India’s own ambitions concede the point. The commerce ministry expects missions to deliver export promotion, market intelligence and the removal of non-tariff barriers; Niti Aayog wants structured technology-services trade missions to Japan, Germany and the Gulf. Semiconductor capability, global capital, technology partnerships—these are clearly diplomatic objectives as much as economic ones.
A tariff line held in Brussels is a factory in Coimbatore. A technology annex in Tokyo is a fab in Gujarat. A co-production clause in Washington is a squadron that flies. A data arrangement with Singapore determines how an Indian technology company scales. The economy-tech-defence triangle is no longer a single theatre of diplomacy, but the whole map, and it requires people who closely understand the substance on the table.
India already accepts the principle in part: defence attachés have long brought military expertise into its missions. Should that logic not extend to a trade economist in Brussels, a semiconductor specialist in Tokyo, a fintech lawyer in Singapore, an investment professional in the Gulf?
Nor should the doctrine stop at the ambassador’s office. The second and third layers of a mission—the counsellors and first secretaries carrying a trade brief, technology file and an investment account—are where domain depth decides whether an agreement becomes an outcome. Build specialist capability into those layers, systematically, while the IFS supplies coherence.
Diplomatic capital compounds through continuity. A mission that links political access with intelligence, commercial and regulatory understanding and private-sector relationships creates institutional memory beyond one posting. This matters as opportunities rarely arrive by a timetable of personnel rotations; they require persistence, follow-through and the ability to carry relationships across geopolitical cycles.
The lesson from lateral entries to domestic civil services is instructive. India has accepted, in principle, that specialized capability can be sought from outside; in practice, a reform conceived a decade ago has stayed irrelevant, worn down by cadre interests and institutional friction. The state has been more comfortable asking expertise into the room than letting it craft policy.
Some missions demand a career diplomat’s decades of relationships. Others will benefit from political access no bureaucratic authority can replicate. Many need deep expertise in technology, trade, finance or defence. The envoy should be chosen for what would yield best results.
How do we judge returns on diplomacy (RoD)? We must not reduce it to a tally of agreements signed. RoD must cover all economic, strategic and institutional gains, some of which compound over the years. A state that refuses to measure the yield of its diplomacy risks mistaking activity for overseas influence.
India needs greater diversity among its diplomats. The country’s foreign-relations challenge is to deploy political envoys, career diplomats and domain specialists in accordance with a broad strategy formulated to maximize the national advantage.
Kautilya understood that an envoy was an instrument of power, not just a conveyor of messages. His ancient classic Arthashastra places a demanding test on the envoy: “Whoever has succeeded as a councillor is an envoy.” India should recover that standard. In an age where markets, technology, capital and security converge, choosing an envoy is an act of statecraft.
The authors are, respectively, a corporate advisor and author of ‘Family and Dhanda’; and a Supreme Court lawyer and former IRS officer.