On 10-11 December 2010, the Ministry of External Affairs hosted a public conference on 'Public Diplomacy in the Information Age'; it was attended by about 200 persons, ranging from current and former MEA officials, foreign diplomats, journalists, scholars, and those interested in public affairs. On the second day, three of the foreign academics who attended held what amounted to tutorial workshops on themes ranging from country branding to planning and evaluating public diplomacy (PD) programs. The event was successful in sensitizing Indian opinion-makers on the utility of PD.

My colleague Amb. Rajiv Bhatia wrote a fine essay on this conference that was published in 'The HIndu' on 11 January 2011. This is found at: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article1078600.ece

I have also written an article on the way India might better organize its PD activities, which was carried in 'Business Standard' on 17 January 2011. Please see: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/kishan-s-rana-re-setting-india%5Cs-public-diplomacy/421889/

One key issue in PD activities is for all the concerned official agencies to work together -- tourism, economic promotion agencies, those handling culture, education, diaspora affairs and the rest, and by that same token, for these agencies to bring on board the private, non-official actors. Of course, this is difficult, and perfect harmony is an impossible goal. But when the different stakeholders understand that they share common interests, one begins to work together. The first essential step is for the principal official organizations, especially the foreign ministry, to accept the others as legitimate and relevant parties. Often, it is that first step that is the hardest.

My impression is that in India we are at the cusp of taking that first step. Hopefully, better realization of the value and the methods of public diplomacy will lead to improved policy direction, the more so for those measures that lie in the domain of the government, especially in terms of providing national leadership to a relatively harmonized PD effort, even while we celebrate Indian plurality and realize that India will never have a single set of ground level actions.

Bilateral diplomacy (BD) is a basic building block of international relations. Even in regional and in much of multilateral diplomacy, it is the relationships between pairs of countries that often determine outcomes. One of my early books was 'Bilateral Diplomacy' -- a textbook that grew out of the very first course of lectures I developed at DiploFoundation. That book has been translated into Chinese by Peking University Press.

That textbook prompted the Canadian Foreign Service Institute in 2005 to commission me to develop a 'self-learning' distance course on this same subject; it forms part of their virtual campus offering. In 2008 a course under the same title was developed by a team that I joined, for the British Foreign Office.

A few weeks back I wrote an article that was published in 'Business Standard' of 25 December 2010, suggesting ways in which India might do more to develop its key bilateral relationships. This article is at: http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/kishan-s-rana-beyond-diplomacy-101/419479/

BD remains a relatively under-explored subject, one that does not seem to have attracted sufficient notice from scholars. Of course, practitioners work at it, but perhaps do not write enough on it, or put to pen their direct experiences. Any thoughts on this?