As the capital gears up for the grand G20 summit next weekend, not many may remember that exactly 40 years ago, New Delhi played host to not one but two mega gatherings of international leaders-the Non-Aligned Summit in March, followed by the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in November 1983. It was also the year that my batch sat for the Class XII board exams and the twin diplomatic jamborees were huge sources of distraction. Nowadays, organising international conferences are a cinch; everyone knows what to do and there are professional managers on hand too. But in 1983, when the government brashly decided to hold two of them back-to-back, there was practically no expertise available, either official or private. The only previous large international events were the UNESCO and UNCTAD conferences of 1956 and 1968, but not on the scale needed for the 1983 summits.
India had, of course, hosted the Asian Games in 1982 in New Delhi but athletes and diplomats were hardly comparable. And heads of state and government were another ballgame altogether. But the Asiad was useful in that it provided the capital with infrastructure in the form of several new, large five-star hotels. That followed a tradition as it were, given that the Ashoka Hotel and Vigyan Bhavan were built in record time for the 1956 UNESCO meet.
But even if basic infrastructure was in place in 1983, India lacked some skills to pull off conferences of this size. And that set the stage for a very unique phase in the history of the Indian Foreign Service. I doubt that ever before-and possibly never again-have the families of our diplomatic service been roped in en masse for a showpiece international event, in addition to the relatively small corps of IFS officers. It proved to be a light-bulb moment in many ways. Caught in a sort of twilight zone between India and abroad, very few in this cohort actually realised they had picked up marketable skills in their peripatetic lives. Spouses (mostly wives at that time) and children, whose familiarity with foreign languages and customs had never been considered before, were suddenly in demand. Their ability to think on their feet and deal with important people from different cultures with poise and tact was acknowledged.
Certain areas were obviously handled by civil servants and government agencies, such as security, the agendas for meetings, formulation of background papers etc; hotels handled accommodation and food. But many IFS spouses and children discovered hidden talents while coping with the challenges of actually liaising with world leaders. Back then the media was not what it is today and hence this novel aspect of the two conferences never got public attention.
The remunerations were a pittance, but most of us-yes, I was one of the many teenaged 'children' who eagerly volunteered as 'protocol officers'-looked upon those conferences as a chance to test our own abilities rather than just an opportunity to earn some money. We drew immense satisfaction from making sure meetings ran to schedule and leaders got the information or help they needed in time. We even accompanied them to venues around the city.
And we had the priceless privilege of listening in on the discussions and debates in the meetings, gaining firsthand knowledge of how international agreements are hammered out. We realised how much "success" depends on not only the personal equations among leaders (especially that of the host nation) but even the addition or subtraction of a punctuation mark from final drafts of declarations. It was a world we had not seen earlier as just 'spouses and children'.
The sheer scale of the 2023 G20 event-with over 200 meetings held all over the country during the year of India's presidency-dwarfs the conferences of 1983. But those two summits were the launching pad for many more international diplomatic conferences in New Delhi, including the Six Nation Summit in 1985. Predictably though, the demand for the skills of IFS families diminished gradually as newly qualified professionals took over.
Today there would be cries of cronyism at this co-option of families into an event of national importance instead of more 'open' hiring practices. But at that time, it was a brilliant example of jugaad. Now IFS spouses (no longer mostly women) have many more avenues to use their skills and talents; presumably IFS children too have better things to do than work for a pittance at international summits. But 40 years ago, it was a watershed moment for many of us.
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/india/scaling-the-summits-india-has-come-a-long-way-from-1983-to-2023/articleshow/103293566.cms
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