By IANS,
New Delhi : The long-dormant policy planning division of India’s external affairs ministry has revived with its first strategic meeting focusing on India’s burgeoning economic and security interests in the piracy-prone Indian Ocean Rim region.
Brainchild of Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor, the meeting Tuesday evening brought together an array of experts to shape India’s policy towards the strategically important Indian Ocean Rim region.
Tharoor was enthused by the response. “Excellent thoughtful MEA policy planning discussion on Indian Ocean, with thinktanks, former diplomats, naval officers & academics joining,” said a tweet message Tharoor posted on the social networking site Wednesday.
The brainstorming session was attended by Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, top officials of the external affairs and defence ministries as well as experts associated with leading think tanks like the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), the Indian Council for World Affairs (ICWA) and the National Maritime Foundation.
Retired diplomats, academics from Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University and representatives of business bodies like the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) and ASSOCHAM also participated in the meeting.
“It was a very useful meeting. India has huge stakes in the stability of the Indian Ocean Rim region,” said an expert who attended the meeting.
The discussions focused on devising a multi-faceted strategy for expanding cooperation among 18 countries of the Indian Ocean Rim-Association for Regional Cooperation (IOR-ARC).
In recent years, India has accelerated its involvement in the Indian Ocean Rim considerably, largely because of increasing Chinese influence in the region.
The revival of the policy planning division is significant as it seeks to bring together top policy makers cutting across territorial divisions of the external affairs ministry to discuss issues and regions that require a more holistic approach. In other countries like the US, the policy planning group in the state department plays a key role in shaping big-ticket polices and foreign policy agenda.
It also underlines a more proactive approach by India to shape the global agenda on leading issues like climate change and Indian Ocean security.
With piracy becoming a serious global threat, Tharoor focused on India’s plans to intensify not just security cooperation with the other Indian Ocean Rim countries, but also exhorted business and cultural bodies to expand people-to-people contacts.
Making a strong pitch for identifying priority areas and joint projects in academic, business and economic areas, he underlined the need for drawing up an action plan to intensify multi-pronged cooperation among countries of the region, the sources said.
The idea of holding a policy planning meet on the Indian Ocean Rim countries came to Tharoor when he went to attend the plenary meeting of IOR-ARC in Yemen in June, his first trip abroad after assuming office. The Indian Ocean Rim countries are planning to set up an anti-piracy centre in Yemen.
Yemen currently holds the rotating presidency of IOR-ARC. India will take charge of the Indian Ocean body in two years.