Arunachal Pradesh: All is not well

      When India lost war against China in 1962 it led to huge uproar in parliament. Whole nation was angry because people (rightly) felt that Jawaharlal Nehru’s feeble foreign and defence policy was responsible for this fiasco. Finally Nehru was compelled to answer about this debacle in parliament. Nehru attempted to reduce the the impact of his blunder by giving a justification in parliament that “The land which we lost in this war was barren. Not a single piece of grain grows there and hence it is not a significant loss”. All the M.P’s were aghast to listen such a shameless justification from Nehru. No one had anticipated Nehru will descend so low. In those circumstances Rajaji stood up and removed his cap. He showed his bald head to Nehru and said “look at my head jawaharlalji it is completely bald. Not a single hair grows on my head like that barren land where as you say a single piece of grain doesn’t grow, but still I wear the cap to protect it from cold, heat and rain. Because even if it is bald it is my head and it is my duty to protect it. Similarly even if the land was barren it was our land and as a P.M of the nation it was your duty to protect it, but you failed miserably. Nothing can justify your inability".  

         I recollected this incident because in last month two important news came which did not bother many in India except few defence experts. 1) China started sea trials of its 68,000 ton aircraft carrier Varyag and 2) China deployed missiles capable of delivering nukes deep inside India along with Arunachal Pradesh border. China’s claim on 90,000 Km. territory of Arunachal Pradesh is not unknown to anyone. China's seriousness is evident from it's policy of allowing people of Arunachal pradesh in China without visa. China argues that Arunachal is their territory so people residing in Arunachal are Chinese citizen hence they needn’t require visa to enter in China.

image source- via Wikipedia

        China has built railway lines in Tibet and highways extending from the main land China to Sino-Indian border. China is also building various dams on Brahmaputra River by which India will not only loose 40,000 M.Wt of Hydroelectricity but whole North-East will become vulnerable to floods and droughts created by China. China is encircling India by building military bases and extending hand of friendship to neighboring countries of India like Pakistan, Nepal, Myanmar and Sri lanka. China’s affection for Pakistan is not hidden from anyone. Earlier China has given J-10 super fighter to Pakistan and now it is helping Pakistan to built Khushab nuclear reactor from which Pakistan can extract plutonium for its nukes.

             China is determined to amalgamate Arunachal Pradesh in their territory by hook or crook, on the contrary Indian government’s response to this grave situation is as usual lousy. We don’t have railway lines connecting Arunachal with the rest of India. Most of the roads are still as miserable as they were in 1962. Under the name of preparedness Indian government has started some infrastructural projects in last few years, however they are all far behind projected time. Indian Army had recently requested Ministry of Defence to form two special mountain division dedicated to play offensive against China in the course of war, but reports says Babu’s sitting in the MoD have raised objection on cost included in forming mountain division. Since last many years Army is demanding 1500 new Howitzers but because of Bofors ghost MoD is reluctant to buy new howitzers. In the mountain warfare Howitzer, Multi barrel rocket launcher and assault rifle are the key weapons. Howitzers are necessary to attack and neutralize enemy sitting on the top of mountain. The only silver line in grey cloud is recent awakening of Indian Air-force by opening air fields near Chinese border and  deployment SU-30 MKI in the Tejpur and Chusul airbase of Assam.

            In last 49 years our attitude hasn’t change much towards the security of Arunachal Pradesh. During 62 war our soldiers didn’t have enough bullets, snow boots and carbines to give an effective fight, even though situation is not that bad but even China isn’t remain Communist China of Mao’s regime. Today’s China has become super power which is even bullying U.S, leave India. Our Defence minister A.K Antony is famous for his indecisive attitude. Fearful of 3C’s C&AG, C.V.C AND C.B.I defence minister is not ready to take decision on even urgent issues, since he cares more about his blemish free image. Although government assures “all is well’, but how can we rely on their assurance when their various assurances given after 26/11 have been proved foul. 

          Just last month a merchant ship called M.V.Pavit accidently landed on Indian shores and remained there for 100 hours and neither Navy nor coast Guard had any information about it. Last week few terrorists came and carried on explosion near Delhi high court and security agencies are still clueless. Our so called 'honest' P.M Man Mohan Singh is already walking along the lines of Nehru. In 2009 when a question was raised in parliament about Chinese intrusion in India territory, he replied “It’s true that Chinese soldiers have penetrated into the Indian Territory but the intrusion was not of very significant nature”.

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Intelligence Failure -2

                                                                                                                                                

              Continued from IntelligenceFailure-1

• Strife between various intelligence agencies- After independence there were only two intelligence agencies in India IB and MI. IB was civilian intelligence agency hence it was responsible for all internal and external intelligence. During 1962 war India had to face a debacle against China since there was no intelligence input of Chinese invasion, their strength and their strategy. For this unfortunate situation only IB was to be blamed since MI was telling again and again about ill motives of Chinese and their intrusions, but Nehru was not ready to listen to them as he had a tilt toward China because of his socialist philosophy. Now being the premier intelligence agency it was the responsibility of IB to warn Nehru about Chinese motives but the then

  

  K.S.Nair lay naked many 
  truths in his book

  IB chief Bhola Nath Mullik rejected reports of Chinese intrusion by calling them skeptics and presented doctored reports of Chinese strategy and strength. He also advised Nehru that sending some packets of Indian Army to the disputed area will keep Chinese away. The duo(along with Defence minister Krishna Menon and Nehru's cousin Major General B.M Kaul) was busy in singing the song of peace and the over confident Nehru stopped expansion of armed forces by arguing that developing nation like India can’t afford it. Situation was so bad that Indian ordinance factory had to make kettles, matchsticks and T-shirts to pay the salary of its employees. All this nonsense lead to fiasco in the war. Naturally this created strife between IB and MI and this split widened further after the failure of IB and MI in getting information about Pakistan’s ambitious plans Operation Gibraltar and Operation Grand slam and the debacle of Ichchogil Canal in 1965 war. Hence Indira Gandhi established R&AW to permanently end the conflict. However it did not extinguished the fire in fact it ignited the fire as this was a major setback for IB since R&AW was awarded the designation of secretariat and IB remained Directorate (in Indian administration those government departments and agencies are called Secretariat which are entrusted the task of policy making and those departments and agencies are called Directorate which implements the policy). Not only that earlier IB was in charge of external intelligence hence all the foreign postings, luxurious life styles, high pay and perks were in the pockets of IB but now R&AW had snatched that. R&AW had to directly report to P.M, whereas IB was put under the Home ministry. All this lead to clashes between IB and R&AW. Relation between MI and R&AW were extremely healthy in the decades of 70's, which paid us in 1971 war by giving us glaring victory over Pakistan. However in late 80’s relation between R&AW and MI started deteriorating and infiltration of Pakistan supported Mujahidins in Kargil and total unawareness of both the agencies about such a big plan attracted many criticisms, to which both washed their hands and blamed each other. Today every intelligence agency considers each other as their rival and don’t want to share information with each other, for which country is paying unaffordable cost.

• Misuse of intelligence agencies by ruling parties-Intelligence agencies are being misused by politicians for their personal interests. During emergency Indira Gandhi used R&AW to tape the phone calls of her political opponents, not only that later on when she became suspicious about motives of some of her own colleagues and party members she got their phone also taped, because of which R&AW came to be known as Indira’s Gestapo (Gestapo was Hitler’s secrete police service which was used to nab people who were involved in the conspiracy against Hitler). This custom started by Indira Gandhi is followed by all the political parties without any hasitation. Remember Amarsingh’s phone tapping by intelligence agencies in 2008 and when dug dipper it was found that not only Amar singh and Mulayam singh even Digvijay Singh’s (congress general secretary) phone were also tapped. All political parties creates hue and cry when they are in opposition that their phones are being taped and they are being followed by intelligence agencies but when they themselves come in power, follows the same conventions which were cultivated by their predecessors. How one can expect an intelligence agency to give timely information about potential terrorist attack when they are busy in tapping phones of the political opponents of their bosses.  No other country in the world tolerates such nuisance. Even in India Supreme Court had put some stringent guidelines about phone tapping in one case in 2003. According to the judgement of S.C only 11 investigating and intelligence agencies were given the right to tap the phone in national interest and that too on the prior permission of judicial magistrate, but all political parties believe that morality and laws are made to be followed by others. 

• Domination of IPS officers- All the top positions in intelligence agencies and paramilitary forces are dominated by IPS officers. This system was started by British, since they did not have much faith in Indian people. They wanted to consolidate their rule in India hence they recruited Indians on lower posts in all governments services and higher posts were exclusively reserved for British origin people, so that they can command the forces. As most of the IPS officers were from British origin top posts in intelligence agencies were given to them. This system needed to be changed after independence, since these IPS officers were not eligible for the technical work of espionage and intelligence. Although IPS officers also have their informers and intelligence network but it is only on local level and a job of intelligence agency is much more technical, which can’t be handled by a generalist IPS officer satisfactorily, to give it full justice a specialist is needed. Secondly IPS officers aren’t posted in intelligence agencies permanently, they are sent on deputation which is kind of temporary posting. Now think that when an IPS officer is posted in intelligence agency on deputation it takes at least six months or maximum a year to learn his work and become well trained and deputation mostly ends in two or three year, that means 33% to 50% time of an officer is wasted in training. Thus intelligence agencies have been converted in to a training institute for these IPS officers. Thirdly this system generates feeling of hopelessness in lower rungs of intelligence agencies, since the junior officers are appointed by direct recruitment and they have to work permanently in the intelligence agency which they have joined. Now in such condition where top posts are reserved for IPS officers they feel that no matter how much we work we are never going to be promoted.

• Hidden under the iron curtain of secrecy- During British times intelligence agencies were mostly concerned with spying of congress leaders and hence their work and budget was kept secret under the “Official Secrets Act 1923”. After independence this law needed to be repelled since in a democratic country such colonial laws are unacceptable but it did not happened. Most of their work is kept confidential, they are kept out of the preview of RTI Act-2005.
  Their budget is not subject to scrutiny by C&AG or Parliamentary committees. In the countries like U.S, U.K and Israel there are special

  

  
  

  Major Gen V.K Singh exposed 

  R&AW in his book

  committees which look after the working of intelligence agencies and unlike India they are answerable to Parliament, whereas our intelligence agencies are growing under the island unaccountability. Retired R&AW officer Major Gen. V.K Singh has given vivid description of extravagance, misuse and abuse of taxpayer’s money by our intelligence agencies in his book India's External Intelligence.

Remedial measures to strengthen our intelligence network 

• Official Secret Act should be abolished and a new law should be enacted to make working our intelligence agencies more transparent and make them accountable. Spending of intelligence agencies should be scrutinized by C&AG and its report should be presented in Parliament. All the intelligence agencies should be brought under the preview of RTI Act, so that people can ask what is being boiled in our intelligence agencies and misuse of intelligence agencies might be stopped. Now don’t give me  bull sheet argument that if the information about the working of intelligence agencies is published in Parliament all the secret information will reach in the hands of terrorists and enemy countries and this will harm national interest. When I argue in favor accountability of intelligence agencies I do not mean that the information like which spy of R&AW is posted in which embassy of Pakistan or who is our secret agent in Communist party’s Polit bureau in China. What I actually mean is review of their overall budget, their objectives, their organizational structure and their general working and the most important is keep watch over them that they are not being misused. Some people argue that C&AG is not right authority to perform such a technical task. To some extent they are correct but for that specialized regulatory authority like UPSC or Election commission could be appointed, which can look after the working of intelligence agencies. As mentioned earlier all this is already being done in countries like U.S and Israel and their security has not been threatened at all, then how come only our security is going to be threatened. Just by writing in the Preamble of constitution that India is a democratic country can’t make India a democratic country in the true sense. If we have to develop as democracy than we need to nurture the democratic ethos in our administration.

•   Scrap the present system of sending IPS officers on deputation in intelligence agencies rather establish the Indian intelligence cadre like IAS, IPS, give them training and appoint them in intelligence agencies. This will serve two purpose first it will improve the working of intelligence agencies since, now those who are inducted on top post in intelligence agencies are specialist men fully trained and able to deal with such jobs. Second it will also give chance to officers in the lower rungs to get promoted by doing good work. Not only that these officers of Indian Intelligence Cadre can be transferred from one agency to another, so that they do not develop patriotic feeling about one particular agency and do not develop the our group their group schema so that inter agency rivalry can be reduced.

• Enact stringent laws for phone tapping and wireless interception. Although S.C has given guidelines in various cases but now a comprehensive legislation needs to be enacted for this. So that a regulatory body can be established (or the matter can be included in the jurisdiction of already established regulatory body like TRAI) which will look after the matters of phone tapping and wireless interception and if any investigative or intelligence agency is found to be misusing or abusing this procedures than exemplary punitive action should be taken on them (including their political bosses). Since the rate at which the use of mobile phone and internet is growing in India, people’s personal life has become vulnerable to such misuse of communication technology and if we will not wakeup on time than in future our personal lives will be jeopardized by authorities at their will and discretion.

•   Last but not least is politicians should stop discrimination and favoritism in intelligence agencies. We have seen long history of appeasement of one agency at the cost of other. IB was favorite of Nehru and Mrs. Gandhi’s favorite was R&AW, she had so much faith in R&AW that she imposed emergency and conducted operation Blue star on the advice of R&AW while the IB was opposing it(IB being internal intelligence agency it should have more say in matters like emergency and operation Blue star). Morarji Desai had allergy of R&AW because of R&AW's role in emergency hence he rather than restructuring the intelligence network settled personal scores with R&AW by reducing its strength and budget. R&AW had managed to engage a mole in Pakistani security and got blue print of Kahuta atomic plant but Morarji Desai declined to pay 10,000$ to that mole and instead informed about it to Pakistani establishment (if Morarji Desai wouldn’t have done foolishness than Pakistan couldn’t have become nuclear state). Rajiv Gandhi, strengthened R&AW again but misused it to give training and weapons to LTTE in the Shrilanka to get political advantage in Tamilnadu. All this favoritism and discrimination of intelligence agencies created rivalry among different agencies. Hence intelligence agencies have to be made professional and personal relations and grievances should be kept aside, otherwise country will keep paying for it. 

Unless and until we will not bring drastic reforms in our intelligence network we will keep bleeding in many upcoming 26/11.

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Intelligence Failure-1

          Whenever any terrorist attack takes place in our country politicians start their favorite game of mud throwing on each other. center says we had given the information about possible terrorist attack but state did not took it seriously, whereas state claims the information was not actionable and then  both play the blame  game and finally the word intelligence failure is called on to perform heroic role in this whole vulgar drama.   After every terrorist attack many questions arise in our mind such as what actually means by intelligence failure? Why every time our intelligence agencies fail to provide the information about terrorist attack? How our intelligence network works? What are their problems and limitations and what are remedial measures which can be taken to strengthen our intelligence network. First thing first, Intelligence failure simply means inability or incapability of intelligence agencies to provide appropriate information on time about the potential civil, military, economic and diplomatic threats to the country. Now the second question is why our intelligence agencies fail to provide timely information about threats? For this first we need to understand the structure of intelligence network and then we will discuss about their problems and their solutions.

               As there are total 276 intelligence agencies in India, here I can't write about all but will discuss about a broad

Chart of India's Intelligence network

framework of intelligence network in India. At the top of our intelligence network is Prime Minister's Office (P.M.O), which supervises the work of intelligence agencies and formulates diplomatic, military and economic policies accordingly. As Prime Minister is head of government and Nuclear command both this type of arrangement is necessary in order to take immediate action in emergency situation. 

• National Security Council Secretariat- National Security Council Secretariat (NSCS) is the apex organization in India’s intelligence network. It was established in 1998 to fill the gap of coordination among intelligence agencies. In the decade of 90's because of growing incidence of infiltration government desperately felt a need of a single agency which can coordinate the information gathered through different channels and disseminate it to respective stations(i.e. department or agencies). NSCS has three arms viz Strategic Policy Group (S.P.G), Joint Intelligence Committee (J.I.C) and National Security Advisory Board (N.S.A.B).

1) S.P.G is the most important arm among the three organs of NSCS. As it is a decision making and policy making body in the NSCS, its powers are enormous. It consists of secretaries of Cabinet, Defence, Home, Finance, Foreign, Defence production, Atomic energy, Space and Revenue department and ministries. Apart from that chief of staff of all the three services, Governor of RBI, chief of R&AW and IB are also member of this body. It looks after long term and short term economic, military, scientific and strategic threats to the country and prepares a strategy to counter them. For instance Pakistan is pumping fake currency in Indian economy to hamper its growth; hence SPG collects information regarding network and size of the business and develops a strategy to combat the menace of fake currency. 

2) J.I.C which is a representative body of all the intelligence agencies was former apex agency in the field of intelligence, before establishment of NSCS. However it still looks after the analyses of information brought by DIA, R&AW and IB, but policy making function is transferred to other arms of NSCS. 

3) N.S.A.B is headed by National Security Adviser (NSA) who is a person of eminence in the field of diplomacy, defence and intelligence. He is given the rank of cabinet minister and other members of the body who are also experts in their respective fields are given the rank of minister of state. This body advises P.M in discharging his duty related to defence, diplomacy and strategic relations. NSA also plays very important role in the formulation of anti terror policy. 

• Ministry of Home Affairs - Although MHA is not an intelligence agency, it plays important role in the coordination and dissemination of intelligence through various channels and works as a link between center and states. After independence various paramilitary forces such as Assam Rifles, BSF, CISF, CRPF, Rapid Action Force have been established to strengthen the internal security. All these agencies come under the jurisdiction of MHA, hence intelligence accessed through them on drug racket, infiltration, poaching, naxalism, money laundering etc. is provided to respective states. Apart from this in every state from a circle inspector to a police commissioner everyone has their own informers, not only that state CID, crime branch and Anti Terrorist Squad all have their separate intelligence network. This local intelligence network of police gives them information about unorganized crimes like chain snatching, rape etc. and organized crimes like extortion, smuggling, drug trafficking etc. however most of the information is related to local crimes, but sometimes they do get some information about interstate and international crime, terrorism, cybercrime etc. about which regular sharing of information is done between different state police.

• Intelligence Bureau- IB is India’s oldest intelligence agency, it has a history of more than 150 years. In this long journey many times its name has been changed but its pivotal place in Indian intelligence network has remained unchanged. Since internal intelligence and counter intelligence is IB’s area of jurisdiction, it works under the direct control of MHA. For this it maintains state headquarters in every state and these field units gathers information about various anti national elements like Naxalites, Maoists, religious fundamentalist groups, cross border intruders, fake currency suppliers, underworld, anti social elements which destabilizes India’s social harmony, spies of enemy countries etc.  It also works as publicity arm of GOI in the country by surveying the public opinion about various government policies. 

• Research & Analysis Wing- R&AW was established in 1965 to relief IB from its mammoth workload by taking over the work of external intelligence. It keeps its spies in Indian embassies situated all over the world and sends its officers in various diplomatic missions sent by India in different countries. R&AW also gives military assistance to Indian armed forces in various international operations. R&AW is a publicity arm of GOI on international front and hence by various means it creates and maintains favorable public opinion for India in different countries of world. It also gives protection to protectorate states of India like Nepal, Bhutan etc. During 1971 war it also gave training of sabotage and guerilla warfare to the soldiers of Bangladesh Liberation Army. In 1975 on the order of GOI it created pro Indian environment in Sikkim which helped (as it molded referendum results in favor of India) to amalgamate Sikkim in India. R&AW has two arms namely Aviation Research Center which has UAV’s by which it conducts aerial photography in border areas and Special Frontier Force which is a kind of commando force used for covert operation, sabotage, guerrilla warfare and military assistance to armed forces. R&AW also looks after COMNIT (communication intelligence), ELNIT (electrical intelligence) and SIGNIT (signal intelligence) through its offshoot agencies Radio Research Center (RRC) and National Technical Research Organization (NTRO). NTRO is a highly technical agency, which is mainly occupied by scientists who looks after the scientific intelligence (such as espionage of nuclear program, space program, weapon development program etc.) and interprets the photographs taken by ISRO satellites.  

• Defence Intelligence Agency- DIA works under the command of Defence Ministry. It was established in March 2002 to work as collaborative agency in the field of DEFNIT (defence intelligence). Prior to its formation the three intelligence agencies of our armed forces namely Military Intelligence, Naval Intelligence and Air Intelligence used to work separately and independently, which created communication gap and lack of cooperation in the field of DEFNIT. Apart from this Directorate of Signal Intelligence (SI) which is responsible for intercepting wireless communication of neighboring countries and maintaining wireless communication with our cross border units and safeguarding it also works under DIA. Joint Cipher Bureau is a technical agency which looks after the Cryptography and encryption. All the intelligence agencies and armed forces world wide use code language for inter organizational communication. This code language is known as Cryptography and the coding of language is called as encryption. JCB prepares these codes for all the intelligence agencies and armed forces of India as well as decodes intercepted information of enemy countries and terrorist organisation.   

• Directorate of Revenue Intelligence- The D.R.I was formed in 1957 to deal with evasion of central excise duties, prevent narcotic drug trafficking, smuggling and economic frauds. D.R.I functions under the Central Board of Excise and Customs in the Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue. With the initiation of liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation policy by government, D.R.I has to face new challenges with the increase in the incidence of drug trafficking, cyber crime, money laundering, tax evasion, black money and fake currency many fold. D.R.I presently deals with the collection of intelligence, its analysis, collation, interpretation and dissemination on matters relating to violations of customs laws, and anti-narcotics law. In order to ensure effective discharge of its responsibilities, DRI maintains close liaison with all the important enforcement agencies in India like the Central Economic Intelligence Bureau, Income-Tax department, Enforcement Directorate, Narcotics Control Bureau, Directorate General of Foreign Trade, Border Security Force, Central Bureau of Investigation, Coast Guard, the State Police authorities and also with all the Customs and Central Excise Commissionerates. It also maintains close liaison with the World Customs Organisation, Brussels, the Regional Intelligence Liaison Office at Tokyo, INTERPOL and foreign Customs Administrations. Intelligence agencies and their possible solution.

                Till now I have discussed about the structure of India's intelligence network, in next article I will talk about the problems of our intelligence network and their possible solutions. 

                                  To be Continued- Intelligence Failure-2

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