Two years after 26/11, the decision of the home ministry to revamp intelligence is not without significance. With all the challenges, including the externally fostered internal security threat that India faces, external intelligence assumes greater importance than ever before. India’s urgent requirement is a meaningfully effective external intelligence set-up and one of the basic aspects that have to be addressed in achieving this aim is cadre management. In this context, the appointment of the head of the Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) from the Research & Analysis Service (RAS) and not the Indian Police Service (IPS) assumes importance. Perhaps it is time we understood that intelligence work is fundamentally different from police work and that there is no real reason why an intelligence agency should always be headed by a police officer.
The government’s recent announcement of the selection of Nehchal Sandhu, a 1973-batch Bihar cadre IPS officer, as the new Intelligence Bureau (IB) chief will have to be followed up shortly with its decision to appoint the new head of RAW as the present incumbent, K.C. Verma, is due for retirement on January 31, 2011. Whether it would choose a professional intelligence officer who has served all his life in the RAW or opt for an IPS officer as the new secretary remains to be seen. Despite the RAW being a multi-cadre organisation, with officers from different civil, military, para-military and technical services, only an IPS officer is deemed fit to be chief. The only two non-IPS officers who became RAW chiefs were N.F. Suntook and Vikram Sood from the erstwhile Indian Frontier Administrative Service and the Indian Postal Service, respectively.
The job profile of an external intelligence head has nothing to do with police work, but demands a hardcore intelligence background. For instance, the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has never been headed by a policeman. Only career intelligence officers, diplomats or military commanders have been at its helm. Similarly, in the case of the British Secret Intelligence Service, the MI6, too, the chief has always had a professional background like his CIA counterpart. Neither has the legendary Israeli secret service, Mossad, ever had a policeman as its chief.
Whereas some police officers, who have been inducted at the beginning of their service into external intelligence organisations and continue throughout, may be quite effective, those with vast experience in domestic intelligence may well function in foreign intelligence operations, but may not prove to be effective. External intelligence is quite different from internal intelligence and involves an element of diplomacy and inter-governmental relations. The Indian intelligence evolution has, however, not allowed the development of an intelligence organisation without police officers. Only because in colonial British India, police officers managed intelligence gathering that later came to be characterised by the police special branch culture synonymous with intelligence duties.
The genesis of the intelligence bureau in the pre-independence period, from which the RAW was carved out in 1968, pertained to anti-thuggery or anti-dacoity duties under the late Colonel Sleeman in 19th-century India. This explains the association between the police and the intelligence work in India. To that extent, this colonial practice of a policeman becoming an intelligence chief continues with no operational rationale even over six decades after Independence.
Intelligence work requires individuals with a penchant for taking risks because of the need to adopt unorthodox methods to purloin information or cultivate relations with people from different walks of life. Therefore, the profile of a police officer which involves immense interaction with people proves suitable compared to those from other Central services. Such a practice was prevalent and appropriate till such time an external intelligence cadre came into existence. But now with cadre officers reaching the same seniority, IPS officers no longer merit preferential treatment, but the metrics for promotion to the position of chief needs to take into consideration their track record in operations. This should be the sole criteria for appointing heads of intelligence agencies.
Traditionally, the RAW has been staffed by a preponderance of police officers, besides academicians, apart from a few officers of other all-India central services, like the customs, posts, income-tax etc. The direct officer recruits along with those from other services form the RAS cadre created in 1985. Also, some IPS, IAS and other Central service officers, who chose to continue in the RAW, opted to join the RAS cadre. As a result, today, when the time for the selection of the chief has come, the government invariably tends to blindly appoint an IPS officer over the RAS cadre officer considering every other issues like seniority, competence, integrity and operational efficiency are on par.
The edge that an IPS officer gets over a RAS officer ceases after decades of active service among officers from both streams. The government cannot afford to perpetuate a caste system by keeping a closed mind that only an IPS officer merits the job of numero uno for its vital intelligence organisations. For instance, a senior officer with a longer track record of service than an IPS officer would be able to guide the organisation better and produce results so necessary in an era of jihadi terrorism and nuclear proliferation that threaten national security.
While the government constantly talks about the need to improve intelligence after high-profile terrorist attacks, one of the ways of doing so is by building an intelligence cadre that nurtures a breed of professional intelligence officers. It is, therefore, logical to appoint a competent and senior RAS officer for the position of chief which would be a step in the right direction. This would motivate the RAS cadre to perform better. The appointment of an IPS officer as the RAW secretary would not send the right signal to the rank and file of the RAS cadre who form the backbone of the RAW.
The government should realise that it urgently needs to develop a decisive edge in external and internal intelligence. Cadre management, critical for optimum performance of both, must be done from time to time to maintain that edge.
Anil Bhat, a retired Army officer, is a defence and security analyst based
in New Delhi