The Hindu Business Line : Speeding up security clearances

The US Ambassador to India, Mr David Mulford, has publicly expressed concern over the `unwelcoming' attitude towards American Fulbright scholars wanting to do research on various projects in India, and towards American Universities offering to set up academic courses. He says that the US is having "increasing difficulty" in getting approval for its scholars, who have to wait "for months and months", whereas every one of the Indian Fulbright scholars is already in the US. According to the US embassy, 59 Fulbright scholars are awaiting clearance to come to India, 45 of them for periods over six months.

This is a long-standing complaint against the Indian Government for as long as the Fulbright programme has existed since the mid-1950s. It is surprising that it should continue to befoul relations between the US and India when both the countries have forged a strategic partnership in a spirit of trust and friendship, and India has even opened up 14 out of its 22 nuclear installations for inspection by outside authorities.

Rigmarole

The delay is mainly attributable to the elaborate process of consultation and shuttling of files among the Ministries of Human Resources Development, Home Affairs (for security clearance based on the verification of the antecedents of the applicants) from the Intelligence Bureau), External Affairs (for ensuring that the projects will not prejudice relations with other countries), Cabinet Secretariat (for clearance from the Research and Analysis Wing to preclude any possible external security implications) and the Ministry concerned with the subject-matter of the project (for clearance from the standpoint of relevance, appropriateness, usefulness and avoidance of duplication with studies that may be already ongoing). Each of them then refers the proposals to nodal agencies and subordinate bodies, going through the typical rigmarole of queries, clarifications, reminders, and so on.

Actually, such purposeless procedural convolutions are the unseemly cobwebs inherited from a bygone era, when the only means of domestic and documentary security was by barring the physical presence of persons and prohibiting access to places and documents considered sensitive. Humankind has since witnessed technological miracles. There is nothing beyond the ken of even a lay person sitting before the monitor of his PC. Remote-sensing, satellite imagery and the like have left no secrets worth prying into anymore. The world has become open and all kinds of information are within reach. The premium these days should be on unhindered traffic of ideas, unclogged channels of communication and hassle-free movement of individuals and groups in furtherance of their legitimate pursuits.

Prime necessity

In view of this, the Government should give up the colonial mindset that is at the root of the laborious and outmoded systems and techniques of security vetting and adopt a `welcoming' approach to visitors, particularly scholars, experts and professionals whose contributions are apt to enrich the corpus of human knowledge and achievements.

Intelligence agencies too must shift their attention away from traditional preoccupations such as surveillance on political parties and personalities opposed to ruling dispensations and on outspoken critics in intellectual and academic circles to activities which patently fall within the canvass of subversion, sabotage, extremism and terrorism. The present diffused, catch-all charters of these agencies prevent them from focussing sharply and unrelentingly on interests inimical to the country and leads to the squandering of their resources and capabilities. Hence, a thorough reappraisal of their strategies, objectives and goals in the context of the knowledge revolution and a world without walls (www) has become a prime necessity.

B. S. RAGHAVAN

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