Mishra transformed India’s foreign policy

Brajesh Chandra Mishra, who passed away late Friday evening in Delhi, will be long remembered for his extraordinary role in transforming India's foreign policy, reshaping its nuclear orientation and modernising its national security system.

Few civil servants in modern India's history have had as much influence in shaping India's statecraft as Mishra, who joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1951.

Mishra, the son of well known Congressman and former Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Dwaraka Prasad Mishra, came into his own after retiring from the government and joining the BJP in the early 1990s.

Mishra's moment came when he was appointed as the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in March 1998. With Vajpayee giving him full support, Mishra had the intellectual conviction as well as bureaucratic skill to lay the foundations for reordering India's engagement with the world.

Within a few weeks of taking charge as the Principal Secretary, Mishra was preparing the ground for the Shakti series of nuclear tests in May 1998.

If conducting nuclear tests and declaring India as a nuclear weapon state was easy, coping with its international consequences was very challenging. As the world powers joined to condemn India's decision and imposed sanctions, Delhi needed political determination, bureaucratic purposefulness and diplomatic skill to break out of the international isolation.

Those were the precise qualities that Mishra brought to the Prime Minister's Office in steering India's ship of state in those difficult moments and helping turn the critics of Delhi's nuclear adventure into eventual partners.

Even as he coordinated India's nuclear diplomacy, Mishra had the bigger task of making India a credible nuclear weapon power. This involved the development of an effective nuclear doctrine as well as the organisational structures to manage India's fledgeling nuclear forces.

His concurrent appointment as India's first national security adviser in November 1998, Mishra had the sweeping authority to recast the nation's foreign and defence policies.

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