On recrafting Australia’s relations with India

It’s as much about institutional capacity as it is about issues of the day

This is an archived blog post from The Acorn.

Rory Medcalf from Sydney’s Lowy Institute for International Policy wrote an open letter to Australia’s new foreign minister. Excerpts:

Your Government has the opportunity to ensure that Australia becomes permanently serious about India, and to manage any ill-feeling that might arise in New Delhi from ruling out uranium sales.

Early reassurance, at the highest level, that Australia wants qualitatively improved ties with India. Any misperception that Australia might focus on China at India’s expense needs to be scotched.

Proper resourcing of Australia’s diplomacy with India: this has several facets. India is not just another country. The billion-plus scale of its population is echoed in its cultural and geographic diversity and the size and complexity of its mass media, political and business interests. In this context, and if your agenda is ambitious, the tradition of representing Australia’s interests in India with modest diplomatic, bureaucratic and financial resources cannot last. It is time to consider a full India branch in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and a diplomatic presence beyond New Delhi. If Canberra sees fit to deploy diplomats (rather than narrowly-focused trade representatives) in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, why not Mumbai, Chennai or Kolkata? Finally, DFAT has not cultivated a single Hindi-speaker in a decade. Yes, India’s elite speaks English. But much of the political life of the country uses the vernacular, and to consider it not to be worth schooling a single Australian diplomat in that language is a false economy, not to mention an insult to a major world civilisation. (Hindi is also a backdoor to Urdu, and Australia’s diplomatic and security agencies desperately need talent in that language.) [Lowy Interpreter]Medcalf’s arguments echo what this blog wrote during the Mohammed Haneef imbroglio: Australia must invest in institutional capacity that to engage India. Mr Stephen Smith would do well heed the contents of Rory Medcalf’s memo.

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