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The rot begins at the top

One of the most irritating phrases ever coined is, "It could have been worse!" It grates on the ear, particularly in circumstances such as the aftermath of the recent hijack drama. How, one might justifiably ask, could matters possibly be worse when one innocent passenger has been murdered, his killers are off free, and three militants have waltzed off?

Well, I understand matters could have been worse. One of the best-kept secrets of the whole episode was that the hijackers had netted a bigger fish than they knew. No less a worthy than India's intelligence chief in Nepal was on the ill-fated Flight 814! I am not at liberty to disclose his name but you can guess the ramifications had the hijackers known whom they had caught; I shudder to think of the copious amounts of information the gentleman could have poured out under interrogation.

A setback like that is something that India could ill afford given that our foreign intelligence units are so ramshackle anyway. For instance, Nepal, where the hijack crisis began, is universally acknowledged as one of the ISI's favourite haunts; the least one expects of India's men in Kathmandu is that they keep an eye on the Pakistani element. Given the all-round intelligence failure implicit in the hijack drama, this elementary duty seems to have been ignored.

The rot begins at the top. The gentleman in question -- the intelligence chief-turned-hijack victim -- seems to owe his position thanks to his connections rather than any native ability. He is related to a very senior person in the Prime Minister's Office; in fact, it is tough to find anyone in RAW who is not related to somebody or the other such as, say, the head of the National Security Guards.

I was told the decision to give in to the hijackers's demands was not influenced by such relationships. Whether or not you think the Government of India is guilty of "surrender", the decision to exchange three prisoners for the passengers was made without taking this man's presence on the plane into consideration. It isn't nepotism but sheer incompetence that should worry us.

Go back six months to the Kargil conflict. How did Pakistan infiltrate our territory without Indian intelligence having even an inkling of it? It will be easy to blame one or two men for such failures, but the malaise runs deeper than some individuals. I think India's entire intelligence set-up is rotting from within.

The basic cause of the repeated intelligence failures is the lack of professionalism within RAW (the Research and Analysis Wing, India's chief collector and appraiser of intelligence). In any sane set-up this body would be staffed by the finest officers available to the Government of India. But not in RAW! Believe it or not, RAW is staffed by men who just don't make the grade to other offices. The cream of the IAS and the IFS won't bother with unglamorous RAW... The remaining vacancies are filled by people from the armed forces who could not make it up the promotion ladder to brigadier-general and better.

In other words, India's most sensitive intelligence organisation is staffed by the second-rate! As if that isn't bad enough, most of these men lack not just the aptitude but also the inclination to do a good job. Returning to Kargil, do you know what the responsible officer was up to in the crucial months before open conflict broke out? I am sorry to say he was devoting most of his time in trying to arrange for his move from Jammu (where he was posted) to glamorous Paris!

This is not a new situation which you can pass off as the responsibility of the current set of ministers. This is a piece of nonsense that has been going on for decades. In RAW connections count for far more than ability.

This is in painful contrast to the hijackers's meticulous planning. The Government of India was prepared to stage commando operations either at Amritsar or Dubai. Both times, the hijackers ordered the plane to take off before the commandos could land. They didn't stop for fuel in Amritsar and they didn't allow anyone to serve food in Dubai. They had obviously been tipped off. Both their organisation and their capacity to act on information received were better than anything India could do.

At this point, I would like to quote two adages. First, "The twenty-first century will be the information century." Second, "Garbage in, garbage out!" Both refer to the computer industry, but they also offer lessons for the entire Indian intelligence set-up.

T V R Shenoy