Unaccountability of the Indian Intelligence Community - Hiding Corruption & Systemic Failure?

Unaccountability of the Indian Intelligence Community - Hiding Corruption & Systemic Failure?

I have often wondered why intelligence agencies in India are known as ‘secret’ agencies. After having worked in one for a little over three and a half years, I am none the wiser. In my opinion, the appellation is as meaningless as the one used for the agency that protects the President of the United States – the Secret Service. In this respect, our own SPG is more aptly named.

Coming back to the intelligence agencies, their role and functions are shrouded in mystery. Let alone the public, even politicians believe that they are the repository of the nation’s secrets, which need to be protected at all costs. As a result, they have been kept out of the ambit of the Right to Information Act, the path breaking legislation that was enacted in 2005. For the same reason, the entire chapter on Intelligence was deleted from the Report of the Group of Minister National Security that was constituted after the Kargil operations. Surprisingly, the defence forces, which are the major constituents of national security, do not enjoy this privilege.  It is well known fact that matters concerning defence form the essence of national security. The British realised this. That is why, in the Official Secrets Act of 1923, the punishment for disclosing military secrets is 14 years imprisonment, while for all others it is only three years.

Today, India has the unique distinction of being the only democracy in the World where intelligence agencies are not accountable to Parliament. Being funded by the tax payer, they are public institutions. Logically, the man who pays for their upkeep i.e. the tax payer, must know if his money is being sensibly spent or squandered. If a man gives a hundred rupee note to his servant and sends him to buy vegetables, does he not have a right to ask for the price of each item that was purchased and the balance of the money left over? He also has a right to ask his servant which market or shop he visited and why he took so long. Even the defence forces are subject to statutory audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Why not the intelligence services?

No body, including our honourable members of Parliament who pass the budget, know how much money is spent on out intelligence agencies. The misuse of secret funds by the intelligence agencies one of the best kept secrets in this country. In his book ‘The Kaoboys of R&AW – Down Memory Lane’, B. Raman, an ex RAW officer writes that when Narsimha Rao was the Foreign Minister, he noticed that RAW and IB officers posted in Indian embassies had the latest AND most expensive cars. “How do they manage to find the money?” he asked. He also pointed out that the CIA and other foreign intelligence agencies could easily identify  Indian intelligence officers from the expensive cars maintained by them. One does not have to be a chartered accountant to find the answer to Narsimha Rao’s question. Would this have been possible if the agencies were subject to Parliamentary oversight or statutory audit?

       The main reason for the misuse of so called 'secret' funds is lack of accountability and financial audit. India is perhaps the only democracy in the World where the intelligence agencies are not subject to parliamentary oversight. In USA, the CIA has not one but four levels of oversight – the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; the Inspector General (IG, CIA); and the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which comprises trustworthy and eminent citizens with experience whose job is to see that intelligence agencies do not violate laws of the land or indulge in unethical practices. In UK, oversight is exercised by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) that is appointed by and reports to the Prime Minister. Canada has a Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) that oversees the functioning of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and reports to the Canadian House of Commons. In addition, there is an IG, CSIS who carries out functions similar those of the IG, CIA in the USA.

If all other democracies have some form of parliamentary oversight over their intelligence agencies, what is so special about India? Forget about parliamentary oversight, RAW does not even have a formal charter. The Group of Ministers did recommend one in its report in 2001, but no one knows whether it has been officially accepted and formalised. Though details of the recommended charter were published in several articles in 2001, according to RAW and the National Security Council (NSCS), it is secret. If the Army, Navy and Air Force have a charter, should not the intelligence agencies also have one?

The argument advanced by intelligence agencies against being subjected to parliamentary oversight is that it will compromise security. This is not true, for many reasons. It is important to understand the meaning of national security, before one can decide what compromises it and what does not. The most important ingredient of national security is the capability to defend one’s territory (military), followed by good neighbourly relations (foreign policy) and internal stability (police and para military forces). Other factors are a strong economy and industrial base, self sufficiency in food and so on. Intelligence plays a very small role – in fact the only aspect that counts is counter intelligence. The job of our intelligence agencies is to probe gaps in national security of enemy or unfriendly countries, not our own.  They have almost no information of our defence or offensive capability, including nuclear weapons and missiles. If this is so, how does parliamentary oversight compromise security? If Parliament can exercise oversight over the armed forces, the most vital ingredient of national security, why not the intelligence agencies, whose role is relatively minor?

The cloak of secrecy that an external intelligence agency such as RAW covers itself with hides little else than its faults, which remain uncorrected. Strangely enough, the so called 'secret' agency possesses very little that can be called secret. Whatever secrets it has concerns foreign countries, whose disclosure can harm them, not India. Unlike the defence forces or the DRDO, it has little that can be of interest to a foreign country. Yet it treats all information it gathers as highly secret. The only reason for keeping such information under wraps is to protect the source. In case such information is made public, accidentally or otherwise, it is only the source which is compromised, with little effect on national security. An example was the tape of the famous Musharraf – Aziz conversation during the Kargil war, which was made public to show Pakistan's complicity. It did result in the drying up of the source of the intercept, but there was certainly no effect on our national security.  

There are glaring anomalies between the functioning of our intelligence agencies, even at the grass roots level. In the armed forces, information about the enemy is always sent in clear. It is not encoded since that would weaken the code, as the information is already known to the enemy. However, information about own troops and plans is always sent in code. This basic rule of security is violated everyday by RAW, which insists that all information in its possession is secret. At many places along our borders, where Army and RAW stations are located next to each other, the same information is being sent in clear by one agency and in code by the other. Can there be a more obvious example of lack of coordination between our intelligence agencies? Would this have happened if there was a parliamentary committee to ask them questions?

2300, 12 Feb 10

          The demand for parliamentary oversight has been made several times in the past, even by officers who have served in intelligence agencies. The need for accountability and parliamentary oversight is accepted by several officers who were once part of RAW, including B. Raman. According to him, "India is amongst the countries. …which continue to follow the dictum that the intelligence agencies are the most patriotic, can do wrong and hence don't need external checks and balances. There is no desire on the part of the political leadership to make the agencies accountable for their performance." The only attempt to introduce an oversight mechanism was made during the tenure of Prime Minister VP Singh. The suggestion had reportedly come from Jaswant Singh, who was then Chairman of the Estimates Committee of the Lok Sabha. When the RAW chief convened a meeting of senior officers to seek their views on the proposed measure, he was surprised to find that most of them favoured such a measure as it would make them less vulnerable to undesirable pressures from the executive. Interaction with Members of Parliament would also give them a chance to acquaint the public with the work being done by them, removing from their minds many wrong impressions about intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, before the exercise could be completed the VP Singh government fell due to withdrawal of support by the BJP.

         Another major drawback of Indian intelligence agencies is the obsession with secrecy that is totally misplaced. The fixation is carried to such ridiculous extents that the agencies are reluctant to use even their names. RAW prefers the all embracing euphemism Cabinet Secretariat which fools no one. A search for the list of intelligence agencies worldwide reveals no less than 13 agencies in USA, including CIA, while MI5 and MI6 are clearly listed under UK and Mossad in Israel. The intelligence agencies of almost all nations in Europe, including erstwhile soviet states of Eastern Europe are also listed, as are those of South America and many African nations. But under India, one will find Cabinet Secretariat and Ministry of Home Affairs. 10

     The irrelevance of the obsessive secrecy that envelopes RAW and its activities was brought about by Shashi Tharoor, the present Minister of State for External Affairs, during the first RN Kao memorial lecture on 20 January 2007. Tharoor, then Under Secretary General for Communications and Public Information at the United Nations, stressed that the facelessness of RAW may be working to its disadvantage, since its personnel were not getting the recognition they deserved for their valuable contribution to India's foreign policy. Noting that the agency was not accountable to Parliament and its funds were subject to only a limited scrutiny, Tharoor felt said that RAW was being distrusted and criticised by the media and the public, without it having any chance to defend its actions. "RAW's exact locus within the Indian strategic establishment has remained a puzzle", he said. He went on to add: "I think it is a great pity if it true that, as I am told, secrecy has gone to the point where many who serve in RAW themselves do not have a sense of their own history."11

            The cloak of secrecy that an external intelligence agency such as RAW covers itself with hides little else than its faults, which remain uncorrected. Strangely enough, the so called 'secret' agency possesses very little that can be called secret. Whatever secrets it has concerns foreign countries, whose disclosure can harm them, not India. Unlike the defence forces or the DRDO, it has little that can be of interest to a foreign country. Yet it treats all information it gathers as highly secret. The only reason for keeping such information under wraps is to protect the source. In case such information is made public, accidentally or otherwise, it is only the source which is compromised, with little effect on national security. An example was the tape of the famous Musharraf – Aziz conversation during the Kargil war, which was made public to show Pakistan's complicity. It did result in the drying up of the source of the intercept, but there was certainly no effect on our national security.  

There are glaring anomalies between the functioning of our intelligence agencies, even at the grass roots level. In the armed forces, information about the enemy is always sent in clear. It is not encoded since that would weaken the code, as the information is already known to the enemy. However, information about own troops and plans is always sent in code. This basic rule of security is violated everyday by RAW, which insists that all information in its possession is secret. At many places along our borders, where Army and RAW stations are located next to each other, the same information is being sent in clear by one agency and in code by the other. Can there be a more obvious example of lack of coordination between our intelligence agencies?

12 Feb 2010