Has Vice-President Ansari set the cat among the pigeons by suggesting that intelligence agencies in the country — an obvious reference to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) — should be made accountable to Parliament? An honourable man, Ansari may not have desired to provoke a controversy. The unintended timing however of his remark is significant. The revamping of Homeland Security apparatus by a proactive Union home minister and the departure of an all-time great National Security Adviser MK Narayanan have pushed us to the stage where changes in the way we generate intelligence, particularly to combat terrorism, and make use of it, are inevitable and assume much more than academic import.
In fact Ansari has done signal service to educate those who are not aware of the perils of having a runaway intelligence organisation. Few people today can recall the misuse of intelligence agencies in the days following the imposition of Emergency in 1975. Ansari’s talk, available verbatim on the Net, is flawless in detail, well structured, logical and dignified in language.
The fundamental premise is that intelligence agencies are powerful and yet not accountable or open to scrutiny by the citizen or his representatives. They are misused the world over by the ruling clique to keep their political adversaries at bay, so that the former can remain in power for ever. These are popular impressions, which are not wholly wrong, yet only partially correct. Our Intelligence Bureau, which came into existence under the British and is still functioning under an executive order without the backing of an Act of Parliament, has a largely clean record, thanks mainly to the good leadership it has received over the years. Successive governments have surprisingly resisted the temptation of tinkering with it and making it serve their crass political needs. This is why I am not comfortable whenever there is a demand for a political oversight of the IB.(I cannot speak with any authority on the RAW, which, incidentally, has had a tumultuous history since it was born in 1968, because of the continual turf war between its own RAS cadre and the IPS ‘intruders’.)
In the case ofIB and RAW, we need to remember that both are not autonomous but are subject to ministerial control, the former under the home minister and the latter under the Cabinet secretary reporting to the prime minister. Both deal with national security and allied sensitive matters. Any mechanical application therefore of the concept of ‘accountability’ is bound to be exploited by our foes across the border.
In the current context of the demand for enhanced probity in spending government monies, certainly the two organisations should be monitored. It is a fact that both of them have enormous discretionary funds, and it should be ensured that these are not diverted to personal pockets. It must be remembered at the same time that these funds are meant for operational expenditure that, by its very nature, cannot be subject to CAG audits, as that kind of scrutiny will cause huge embarrassment to all concerned. It will expose individuals who help the two outfits and who will shy away from it if their names get into the public domain. This is why great care needs to be taken to appoint men of unimpeachable integrity to occupy the higher echelons of the two organisations. There is no other way you can ensure high standards of propriety in handling secret funds.
A Parliamentary committee to oversee intelligence agencies will have to be composed of MPs who are well informed on the
mechanics of intelligence collection — mature, objective legislators who will not take a partisan view. Such a committee should at best be provided inputs that will enable them to check whether there are political overtones to the day-to-day chores of the two outfits. For example, telephone monitoring is a controversial area. This is so well regulated by law and government orders these days that only a reckless intelligence chief will resort to politics in deciding on which telephones be kept under watch. The committee should not demand information on the nitty-gritty of the trade — intelligence has become controversial in a controversy-ridden world. Given the quality of our Parliamentary debates in the recent past and the condemnable partisanship and acrimony displayed by some members, I am not very sure that the innovation of a Parliamentary committee to keep the IB and RAW from being misused by government is the brightest of ideas just now.
I will go with the vice-president in citing the models that have gained roots in the US and UK and studying them seriously. We may however have to move slowly. Or else the committee proposed will become a shoddy battlefield that pits the IB and RAW to face the crossfire. These two outfits may not be the best in the world. They are still good enough to be left alone and encouraged to improve their standards under the present system of semi-remote control.
Comments