The Hindu Business Line : Taking stock of RAW’s working

The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) is the Central agency to which has been entrusted the vital responsibility of keeping the Government posted in a timely and actionable manner with the events, developments and options pertaining to other countries, with special focus on Bangladesh, China, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It has been in the news in the last few years and it is axiomatic that whenever an intelligence outfit gets into the news it is invariably for the wrong reasons.

There was, for example, the sensational disclosure of its having harboured a CIA mole, Rabinder Singh, who held the high rank of a Joint Secretary, and who managed to escape to the US via Nepal, without the powerful Agency being vigilant enough to prevent it.

In fact, the Web site of wiki.answers blithely says that the ‘easiest way’ to get into RAW is through the CIA and then get posted in India; once you are in the system loop, it says, you would be automatically approached by RAW.

The Web site helpfully advises the person so approached to negotiate the salary with RAW using Rs 38.9 to a dollar!

The blame for the calamitous course of events relating to Kargil was also laid at the doors of RAW. More recently, reports in sections of the media have talked of a feeling of letdown within the Government over not getting a dependable assessment from RAW of the situation in Pakistan leading to the declaration of emergency by President Pervez Musharraf and its sequel, the activities of China on the Arunachal Pradesh border and the growing power of Maoists in Nepal which had enabled them to score a stunningly dominant position in the elections just concluded.

In the very nature of things, it is impossible to verify the correctness of such stories and the intelligence agencies and the Government too, naturally, refuse to be drawn out one way or the other lest it stokes the controversy further.

Nevertheless, the citizens, voters and taxpayers of the country, through Parliament, have an inalienable right to know whether the nation is getting the value for the money (put at Rs 1,500 crore) spent on RAW, especially in the light of accounts of mismanagement, embezzlement, corruption and misuse of secret funds given in some books written by those who had seen its working from the inside.

Inadvisable and risky

This becomes all the more necessary since the expenditure on RAW is not voted but charged, and details of the different aspects of its functions are withheld even from Parliament. In effect, it is only the Prime Minister and the National Security Adviser who alone have access to the full gamut of its operations, if at all, and it is extremely inadvisable, if not risky, to leave matters concerning the nation’s security to the fallible judgment of two individuals.

As was recommended by the L. P. Singh Committee in respect of the Intelligence Bureau, a standing committee comprising five or six persons of unquestioned eminence with impeccable credentials in terms of knowledge and experience should be appointed to undertake a thorough review, say, twice a year, of the functioning of RAW with reference to quality of output and safeguards against malfeasance and wastefulness.

Without seeking to go into the precise identities and deployment of agents and sources, or the specifics of covert operations, the committee should be entitled to be briefed on priorities and thrust areas, and offer advice on their appropriateness and justification.

Most important of all, the stewardship of RAW should not be the exclusive preserve of police persons, but should go to broadband personalities, from whatever calling, endowed with a panoramic sweep of intellect and grasp of the complexities of today’s realpolitik.

B. S. RAGHAVAN