1 Cutting through red tape: Right from the time Storm of Resolve was launched by the Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces against Al Houthi militia in Yemen, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was directly involved in preparing the blueprint for an evacuation plan for Indians stranded in the war zone. The active involvement of the PM himself helped keep procedural delays and needless file-pushing to a bare minimum. Orders were issued and executed at lightning speed. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) were in synch right from the word go.
2Direct diplomacy: Instead of going through the regular channels of communication that are usually in place between the missions, Modi had direct chat with Saudi King Salman Bin Abdul Aziz to fine-tune a broad-spectrum evacuation plan. As the PMO was directly involved in talks with the Saudi king, securing a four-hour window for Indian commercial aircraft to ferry stranded citizens from the war-zone in Sana’a became that much easier.
3Minister plays ‘Man-Friday’: The decision to send Minister of State for External Affairs, V.K. Singh, to directly oversee the rescue operation from Djibouti was a masterstroke by the PMO and MEA. The presence of a Union minister at ground-zero helped in split-second decision-making, thereby ensuring there was no lack of improvisation as and when necessary. Singh, himself a former general of the Indian Army, came in handy with personal inputs to tackle the situation.
4 Seamless coordination: The PMO, MEA, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Civil Aviation, along with Research and Analysis Wing, India’s external intelligence agency, and the Indian mission in Sana’a played a crucial role in ironing out the glitches and ensuring a seamless operation. Inputs from ground-zero would be conveyed to the PMO and MEA and these two wings would then formulate plans, in close consultation with the Ministries of Defence and Civil Aviation, to make sure the command chain ran like a well-oiled machine. While the PMO looked at the scenario from a macro level, establishing direct channels of communication with the Saudi Arabia, the MEA and other departments worked out the plan down to its minutest detail.
— S.K. D.
