New Delhi, Aug 11 - The elite Indian Foreign Service (IFS) that powers India's global diplomacy and manages relations with nations is changing. Mid-career training and specialisation are the new mantra. Promotions were a matter of aging gracefully, but now even senior diplomats have to prove themselves to move up the career ladder.

In a never-before event, 30 joint secretary rank diplomats - or mid-career diplomats - due for promotion were sent to the Indian School of Business, the country's top business school, at Hyderabad to reorient them to the new challenges of economic diplomacy in a business-driven world.

All diplomats starting at the level of directors now have to submit a well-researched paper on one of the subjects relating to India's foreign policy to graduate to the next step up the ladder. The proposal originated with a report by Satinder Lambah, currently Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's special envoy to Pakistan, on the reorganisation of the foreign office.

Lambah recalled a number of recommendations he made for revamping the foreign office, including reorganisation of divisions/departments in the ministry, integration of policy planning and research division with think tanks, a more objective and performance-oriented promotion policy and the inspection of missions.

'There is no getting away from the reorganisation of the service. The process has already started,' Lambah told IANS.

Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, building upon the spadework on internal reforms initiated by her predecessors Shivshankar Menon and Shyam Saran, set the tone on the day she took charge by emphasising that expanding India's diplomatic capabilities in keeping with its growing global status will top her agenda.

The manpower crunch - just 669 diplomats spread across the headquarters in New Delhi, 119 resident missions and 49 consulates - that has hobbled the ministry is now finally being addressed. Last year, the cabinet approved 30 new posts each year over the next decade.

An article by an American strategic expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, Daniel Markey, that did the rounds, critiqued the functioning of India's diplomatic institutions. Markey said in his article, 'Developing India's Foreign Policy Software', that the IFS is a right fit for a country like Malaysia, but surely not for a rising power.