New Delhi, Nov 30: You always know you will retire; just as you always know you are going to die. But you don't plan for either." It is pack-up time for Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal at South Block and he is in a reflective mood. Self-admittedly, as he signs off from his office of 18 months, retirement is one of those certainties in life a man simply cannot reconcile to.

Widely perceived as one of the most high-profile foreign secretaries since Mr JN Dixit, Mr Sibal is aware of having spent 18 months in the limelight: "If we don't want a self-effacing foreign policy, then we should not have a self-effacing foreign secretary." He also emphasises he is a strong votary of "expressing the vigour of our foreign policy in vigorous terms."
As foreign secretary, he feels he has contributed his bit. For him it has been a fulfiling stint during which he was successful in "raising the morale of the services, giving them a sense of leadership and direction at the bureaucratic level, giving them the feeling somebody is in charge at the head of the services, projecting an image of self-confidence and dignity, articulating our concerns and our foreign policy priorities in as credible and persuasive a manner as possible, focusing on the essentials of our foreign policy and pushing our initiatives in those select areas."
In other words, he feels, he attempted to bring about "the right focus, the right approach, the right application, the right expression, and the right amount of self-confidence." On a modest note, he says: "One is not saying one was necessarily successful. I am only explaining the intention and the motivation."
Admittedly, Mr Sibal has had a pronounced accent on the desirability of a "foreign policy of self-confidence and dignity." According to him, "the peculiar thing about our foreign policy has been that it has not always reflected the inherent strengths of India." At times, feels Mr Sibal, "it has not been commensurate with the role that a country of the size and capacity of India can play if it had requisite self-confidence."
He has seen much smaller countries "much more assertive with their interests and ready to leverage their advantages." He has often observed how "other countries have much greater respect for India than we have for ourselves." This, he says, is "partly because we are so bogged down by internal problems; the country is so vast, the challenges on its frontiers are so dispersed, the attention that has to be paid to governing such a diverse country internally is so great that the leadership often may not be able to pay the requisite attention to foreign policy."
Mr Sibal also regrets "this peculiar mindset, half-articulated, half-unconscious that we are so big, we will survive, that even if we are wounded and bled, the volume of blood in us, because of our size, is so much it will never drain out. So, we adopt passive and defensive postures."
When he talks about a policy of self-confidence and dignity, Mr Sibal says it is based on his understanding of the "great political strength because of our democracy, the great military strength because we are a nuclear power, the great cultural strength because we are an ancient civilisation, the great scientific and technical strength because of our highly developed human skills."
Mr Sibal feels it is not enough to want a foreign policy of self-confidence and dignity; it also has to be expressed as such. For this, he recommends two additional steps: "One is to create awareness within your own country of what are your strengths and why they should get reflected in your foreign policy postures, and two, be able to articulate those postures in acceptable, persuasive, effective language." The problem of foreign policy, feels Mr Sibal, is "not simply formulation of policy, it is also presentation of policy."
Although we have extremely able leaders and policy makers, Mr Sibal regrets we are not always good at presentation, at being communicative: "In any modern democratic state, where the media, public opinion has to be mobilised behind your policies, you must reach out, you must explain. It has to be a pedagogic exercise, people should see who are the policy-makers, how their minds work, and hear them speak up. This creates greater transparency and creates, therefore, greater confidence."
Asked how he and his team have contributed to this effort, Mr Sibal provides an analogy: "The essentials of foreign policy are made by the leaders. The leaders make the recipe. We are the cooks; the Foreign Secretary is the head cook. Sometimes the recipe may not produce the desired delectable dish if it's not properly cooked. To that extent, the Foreign Secretary and his team can play a role in implementation. The second thing is presentation. You can have a nice dish but you have to present it properly."
In terms of implementation and presentation, Mr Sibal says he has had a role to play, to the extent he could have: "I have tried to give visibility to the role of the Foreign Secretary but equally, and more importantly, tried to give a sense to the whole machinery of the foreign office. With 26 Secretaries, 34 Additional Secretaries and 160 Joint Secretaries, the Foreign Secretary is at the apex. You have to give them a sense of leadership, and make them feel through you that they count, that their views count, that they have a role in the structure and expression of our foreign policy and naturally, to a legitimate extent, the formulation of our foreign policy." This, Mr Sibal says, "I have tried to do to the best of my ability."
Amid reports of divisive factions and cliques in operation and faced with a great deal of demoralisation in the services when he stepped into office last June, Mr Sibal feels he has since been able to send a strong message down the line that there was somebody in charge of matters at the head, something that helped greater teamwork and greater enthusiasm in the services.
Looking further back in his career, Mr Sibal makes special mention of his stint as Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington between 1992 and 1995 when Indo-US relations were loaded with negatives.
"The US had officially announced that its policy was to freeze and eliminate India's nuclear capability; the Kashmir problem was at its height. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the mood in the US was quite triumphal. The feeling was that the principles of the market economy and democracy had now acquired universal validity. Therefore other countries were put under pressure to model themselves on the recipes for political and economic governance. So, it was an uphill task for us," says Mr Sibal.
Personally, as Deputy Chief of Mission, Mr Sibal recalls having a tough time engaging the Americans, "to plausibly project our thinking and our case on all these matters and thwart, as far as possible, undue pressures on us on sensitive issues." He also recalls how people in the State Department dealing with India were not particularly helpful.
Times have changed since and today India is talking strategic issues with the US. Noting the shift Mr Sibal says, "The US even at that time was the most important country for us and our effort was to reduce the negatives. The US is still the most important country for us. But the effort now is to increase the positives."
Mr Sibal feels the seeds for the present relationship had been sown a decade ago: "When a battle is won, even if partially, the groundwork for that is made well in advance. So what we defended ourselves against between 1992 and 1995 has been the building block of what we are now achieving in 2003."
Mr Sibal counts the setting up of the India Caucus in the US and the India Interest Group as major Indian achievements in the US during his tenure. Also, the framework of leveraging a lobbyist to project India's interests in the US was built during Mr Sibal's tenure in Washington. Above all, on the nuclear issue and Kashmir, "I stood my ground," says Mr Sibal.
Apart from seeing India through a difficult time in the US, Mr Sibal also takes pride in his tenure as Ambassador to Turkey between 1989 and 1992, contributing to the growth of Indo-Tu