Six things that ought to be done in 2011 but (will probably) not

The economy grew at a fast clip, leaders of the permanent five of the UN Security Council visited India, despite the German Bakery and Varanasi attack, terrorism, by and large stayed its hand, and though it took a new twist, violence in Kashmir flared, and then died down. Even so it is difficult not to believe that 2010 was an annus horribilis for the country. Inflation steadily eroded the income of the common man, and for six months we have been deluged by a tsunami of corruption-related charges.
It began with the Indian Premier League, moved on to the Commonwealth Games, and finally culminated in what promises to be the mother of all scams—the loss of over one hundred thousand crore rupees in auctioning the 2G spectrum. The result has been that even the image of the incorruptible Prime Minister has been sullied. Even today no one believes any ill of Dr Singh. But it is increasingly difficult to separate his personal probity and integrity from the record of his government.
Clearly 2011 is a make or break year for the Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance. What can it do to recover the momentum of governance that it lost in 2009? How does it respond to the insidiously growing perception that it is  rotten and corrupt to the core?
There are six things it can do to revitalise itself in the coming year. But my cynical heart says it will probably not move on any of them.

First Announce the creation of a truly autonomous prosecution agency for the country, in the pattern of the Crown Prosecutor’s Office in Great Britain. Given the urgency of the situation—the Congress party has till the budget session to get back on track—the government may consider issuing an ordinance with the promise of passing a comprehensive legislation thereafter.
The idea is not new. In 1998, the Chief Justice of India J S Verma had called for “an impartial agency comprising persons of unimpeachable integrity to perform functions akin to those of the Director of Prosecutions in the UK.” This was in the context of the Jain hawala diary, a scam which the system— babus and politicians of all ilk—were able to bury effectively.
In 2009, the same CBI opposed measures to separate its prosecution and investigation departments on specious grounds, even while the Union Law Ministry suggested that it be done.
Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrashekhar convened a meeting to resolve the issue, but little came of it. This proposal has the backing of the Prime Minister, the National Law Commission and the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law, Justice and Personnel. It is clearly an idea whose time has come.

Second Announce the termination of the Single Point directive through which mandatory permission is required before prosecution can be launched against a public servant, above the rank of a joint secretary. In some ways this is merely a corollary of the first issue. The Single Point directive was instituted because it was felt that people would pressure public servants by launching fraudulent cases against them.
But the best custodian of everyone’s interests will be the autonomous prosecution agency, and, it alone ought to decide whether or not a public servant can be prosecuted. At present the decision is taken by another babu or a minister, and that has been the nub of the problem.

Third Drop a number of top ministers who are known to be blatantly corrupt. Some of them belong to alliance parties, but at least one of them is a Sanjay Gandhi era Congressman. These ministers have openly looted the country and their activities are spoken of quite openly. No doubt the government has a solid dossier on them. But by its failure to act, it has allowed their activities to tarnish its own image.

Fourth Begin implementation  of a deep reform programme to overhaul our policing system based on the eight reports of the police commissions. The reform should stress the need for accountability, independence and protection against political interference. Reforming the police may be a tall order considering the numerous uses that the political class makes of pliant policemen.
But it is also the cornerstone of any dramatic change in the quality of governance in the country. Just how reluctant politicians are to reform the police is borne out by the fact that a letter calling on states to show political will and institute police reforms written in April 1997 by the then Union Home Minister Indrajit Gupta, failed to get a single response.

Fifth Appoint a Chief of Defence Staff. The failure of the NDA, and then the UPA government to appoint a CDS, who would be a single point military adviser to the government, as well as the core around which a modern and integrated military force can be created, remains a seriously unaddressed gap in our national security management system. The recommendations for the appointment of the position are already in from the NDA period. All that the UPA government needs is to accord it Cabinet approval.

Sixth  Do something, besides forming committees and issuing declarations, to transform agriculture and food logistics. Stagnant productivity, rapacious middle-men and government apathy pose a clear present danger to our polity. Besides food inflation that is stealing incomes across the country, is the issue of worsening conditions of the tens of millions who live in the countryside.
Obviously the most important decision is to decide to actually do something. You may have to work at multiple levels—change some laws at the Centre and States, alter some governmental structures, provide finance and so on. The government needs to urgently consolidate the various “missions” — horticulture, oilseeds, pulses and so on—and then energise them.
It also requires a dramatic transformation of our antiquated system of agricultural marketing which is characterised by waste and the rapacious practices of middle-men. Mandis need to be modernised and provided electronic displays and modern communications, some states must be persuaded to change their outdated Product Marketing Committee laws.
In February 2010 the Prime Minister set up a core group along with some ten  Chief Ministers, the finance minister,  agriculture minister and the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. Their recommendations could form the core of the steps that can be taken in 2011.

The country, of course, has a much vaster agenda. But there are three other areas where the country needs to get cracking in 2011—physical infrastructure, health and education. As for physical infrastructure, no one who lives in contemporary India can be blind to the obvious challenge that our shoddy cities, roads and railway system pose. Yet almost every project is beset with delays and shoddy execution and the consequences of bad roads, electricity grids and antiquated railway systems are paid for by every citizen in manifold ways. 
Though it disavowed him, the Congress has more of Narasimha Rao’s stamp than they would care to acknowledge. They, too, believe that no action is also a form of action, that if you do nothing, things sort themselves out one way or the other. But the time for such mystical approaches is over, the Opposition has smelt blood and is on the prowl and the people increasingly angry at their situation.
The Congress is a master of triangulation and over-subtle calculation. But this will only lead to continuing policy paralysis. The UPA ship captained by Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi is listing, and 2011 could actually compel them to do something—swim. The alternative is to do nothing, and sink.
This appeared in Mail Today December 31, 2010

New Chinese fifth generation fighter J 20

 
I don't normally post articles written by others in my archival blog. But I thought the Chinese fifth generation fighter would be interesting. But I am also posting a Wall Street Journal article of April 21,2009 with it. 


Computer Spies Breach Fighter-Jet Project by Siobhan Gorman, August Cole and Yochi Dreazen

Read more: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124027491029837401.html#ixzz19bB9QnoC

WASHINGTON -- Computer spies have broken into the Pentagon's $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter project -- the Defense Department's costliest weapons program ever -- according to current and former government officials familiar with the attacks.
Similar incidents have also breached the Air Force's air-traffic-control system in recent months, these people say. In the case of the fighter-jet program, the intruders were able to copy and siphon off several terabytes of data related to design and electronics systems, officials say, potentially making it easier to defend against the craft.
The latest intrusions provide new evidence that a battle is heating up between the U.S. and potential adversaries over the data networks that tie the world together. The revelations follow a recent Wall Street Journal report that computers used to control the U.S. electrical-distribution system, as well as other infrastructure have also been infiltrated by spies abroad.

India will foot the bill to develop the Russian fifth generation fighter and then buy it at market price

Condemned to another cycle of fighter jet imports

SO FOR yet another generation, India is going to end up paying for the development of fighters built to someone else’s design. The $35 billion deal to “jointly develop” the fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA) is a misnomer:
India will merely be associated in developing the Indian variant of a Russian fighter, and probably end up paying most of its development costs.
In fact, three prototypes of that fighter already exist and the first flight took place in January this year. It is called the T-50 or PAKFA (no relation to Pakistan).
India was not associated in that design work. But it will now cut into the programme by providing the much needed funds and be able to shape the fighter to its requirements. That process will give the Indian Air Force a good fighting machine. But it is unlikely to provide India with what it needs — the ability to design and develop its own topnotch fighters.



Diagrammatic representation of the Sukhoi T-50 or PAKFA on which the fifth generation fighter will be based.

The contrast with China is obvious. In 1999, China acquired the designs of the Soviet-era Su-27SK fighter which was then manufactured in China as a joint venture between Knaapo, the Russian manufacturer, and the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation. This was then jointly developed and became the Su30-MKK. The contract was terminated well before all 200 fighters were supplied and thereafter the Chinese have come up with their own reverse engineered aircraft, the J-11 which is also the basis of a new naval variant the J-15. Out of this is also likely to emerge the J-XX or the Chinese fifth generation fighter.
The Chinese have considerable experience in reverse engineering Russian designs. But India has been unable to do that though it has paid for licence manufacturing capabilities, first for the Mig-21 series of aircraft, then the Jaguar strike aircraft and finally the Sukhoi 30MKI.
Neither has it developed a significant design and development capability despite funding the Light Combat Aircraft project. India has actually ended up paying the development costs for someone else’s fighters. In this way, we subsidised the development of the Mirage 2000 aircraft, then of the Sukhoi 30MKI and now we will do it with the FGFA. And then we will pay market prices of the final product for the privilege.
ACCORDING to the HAL, a number of Indian design engineers are to be associated with the FGFA. It remains to be seen as to just how many do end up participating in the programme and what use is made of them thereafter. Whether or not this extends to engine development remains to be seen, though this is unlikely.
The Chinese have been relentless in ensuring that they acquire strategic capabilities in key areas. Military aviation is just one such area. The other is high-speed trains in which China has emerged a world leader in the short space of two decades. The systematic manner in which China imported technology and then insisted on transfer of technology and its dissemination into Chinese research and development institutions is to be admired.
On the other hand, Indian processes are opaque and it is the taxpayer who is eventually landed up with a massive bill. Take the Su-30 MKI, from $32 million per piece in 2000, we are now paying $90 million per copy even though they are allegedly being made from raw materials in India. But it is no secret that India imports all key assemblies and the engine (40 per cent by value of the aircraft).
Indian defence PSUs repeatedly make claims about indigenising products, while they actually cheat the exchequer and the public by buying subassemblies and passing of the final product as their own. The 2010-2011 CAG report for the air force and navy gives one instance when a PSU claimed it would make 22 of a kind of surveillance radars indigenously. As soon as it got the approval for the `870 crore project, it placed an order for the import of 13 of the 22 in completely knocked down (CKD) form. To top this, the socalled indigenous product cost `78 lakh more than the original imported radar.

On China, trust is all right, but keep your powder dry

 

CHINESE ambassador to India, Zhang Yan had it about right: “ I am of the view that China- India relation is very fragile and easy to be damaged and difficult to repair,” he noted, just four days ago, on Monday.

Don’t let the hoopla and exaggerated expression of good feelings that accompany the visit of a foreign dignitary mislead you into believing that Sino- Indian relations are hunky dory, because they are not. Indeed, it is taking all the effort of the two leaders who are deeply committed to promoting good relations— Premier Wen Jiabao and his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh— to just keep things on an even keel.

Other forces, India, and, more importantly, in China, have created the conditions which make relations, which were good during 1993- 2005 period, “ fragile”. In China’s view, India’s was the hidden hand responsible for the storm of protest relating to Tibet on the eve of China’s coming out party— the Beijing Olympics of 2008. Indian officials subsequently and systematically leaked stories about alleged Chinese incursions and whipped up a climate of distrust against China. And then there was the Indo- US nuclear deal.

Border

Viewed from New Delhi, China’s issuance of stapled visas in Kashmir signaled a shift in its long- term policy of studied neutrality on the dispute. This was compounded by the denial of a visa to Lt Gen B. S. Jaswal because he commanded the Northern Army which is headquartered in Jammu & Kashmir. The support and sustenance of Pakistan is not a new issue, neither are Beijing’s activities in our neighbouring countries like Burma, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal.

What was new and really marked the shift was the decision in 2009 by China to block any movement in the Special Representatives process which had made considerable strides in resolving the Sino- Indian border dispute.

On Thursday, in an editorial, Global Times , Beijijng’s informal voice to the world put it this way “ Compared to promoting prosperity, the border disputes are not the most urgent item on either country’s agenda.” This is simply not true. When, in 2003, the Special Representatives were created, there was expectations that the border dispute would be resolved quickly, perhaps within 18 months or so. Unfortunately, the principal architect of that visit— prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was forced to retire after the BJP lost the elections of 2004, and the momentum was lost. Even so, during Wen’s last visit in 2005, the two countries signed a path- breaking accord on the political parameters and guiding principles for a border settlement. But in the past two years, the Chinese are making it known that India completely misinterpreted the agreement and there was need for more discussions before the succeeding framework agreement to delineate a new border was worked out. Indeed, China has begun speaking of Arunachal Pradesh as “ southern Tibet” a formulation it had never used before.

Behaviour

The Indian experience has not been unique. Beijing set the cat among the pigeons by declaring, in the context of China’s extensive claims in the South China Sea, that the region was a “ core interest”, in the same category as Taiwan and Tibet.

In response, the entire region— since the Chinese claims involve the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam— has lined up behind the US to fend off Beijing. More dramatic was the standoff with Japan over a Chinese fishing trawler ramming a Japanese coast guard vessel in an area where the two countries dispute the ownership of some islands. The Japanese arrested the Chinese captain, but Beijing’s hardball— suspending critical rare earth exports and arresting four Japanese nationals in China on trumped up charges— compelled Tokyo to yield.

What has spooked the Chinese? It is difficult to know. But it had something to do with its internal politics. This has made them take the angular, if not outright provocative, stands that they have on Kashmir and towards the ASEAN and the South China Sea. There is a certain hubris in China’s behaviour. But the world wonders whether this is the initial gawkishness of a newly risen power, or a forewarning of how the Chinese will behave when they become the truly dominant.

Critics charge that such talk, including the repeated propaganda on Beijing’s socalled “ string of pearls” strategy is paranoid.

It may well be so. But in international politics it pays to be suspicious, especially if you’re the weaker party.

There is a blithe assumption among some commentators that China’s system and government works in much the same way as ours. The system of the party- government diarchy, may not be as complicated as the one run by the mullahs in Iran, but it does not resemble the one that open societies like India or the UK or the US run.

Future

It is a closed system and one in an important phase of leadership transition.

2012 is the year in which there will be a turnover of the top party and government leadership in China. Party General Secretary and President Hu Jintao and government head Premier Wen Jiabao will give way to new leaders who remain unknown entities. Most of the all- powerful Politburo will also retire along with hundreds of other top functionaries. In that sense Beijing is in a phase when there is an in- built tendency to kick the can of difficult problems down the road.

Of greater significance, perhaps, is the fact that many of the problem areas relating to India, Japan and the ASEAN outlined above are dealt with by the powerful People’s Liberation Army. The PLA has a unique role in the Chinese system and modern history. A position in the Central Military Commission, that runs the PLA, is even more coveted than a politburo membership.

Today, the only civilian in the CMC is its chairman, Hu Jintao.

It is difficult to forecast the direction in which China is headed. It would be wrong to outguess history. China has changed enormously in the last four decades. It is entirely possible that the China of 2025 will be a more open society with a transparent government system that will put its neighbours at ease. On the other hand, there is nothing to guarantee that this will happen. China could remain the same prickly authoritarian country that it is, or become even more overbearing and difficult, and, worse, more powerful.

Indian policy must ensure that we do not foreclose any options by being perceived as being part of some anti- Chinese alliance.

The perception that India was growing close to the US may have been the trigger for the Chinese to change the tenor of the relationship in 2007- 2009 period.

Our approach needs to be informed by the key characteristic of the Chinese themselves— pragmatism. India should use the enormous dynamism of the Chinese economy as an aid to its own development. It needs to have a flexible policy where accommodation is met with accommodation, and assertiveness with assertiveness.

But at the same time, prudence demands that we also build up our sadly run- down deterrent capabilities and coordinate our diplomacy with like minded countries to ensure that we are not left hanging alone, as we were in 1962.

In dealing with Beijing, there is need to build up trust, but at the same time, we must keep our powder dry.

This appeared in Mail Today December 17, 2010

Distracted New Delhi teeters on the global highwire

Nicholas Sarkozy’s departure, officials are already burning the midnight oil to receive, in quick succession, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao (15-17 December) and Russian President Dimtry Medvedev (December 21-22). This caps a year in which India has already received two other members of the Permanent Five members of the UN Security Council—British Prime Minister David Cameron and US President Barack Obama.
On December 10, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will attend the Indo-EU summit and meet the leader of the world’s economic powerhouse, Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel. In a period of six months, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would have had summit meetings with the leaders of all the countries that really run the world.
The face of India put before these leaders is the enigmatic visage of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It reveals little, truth to tell; animation is visible only when he meets the US President. It is a calm, confident and assured face. We all wish that the polity that it represents were also the same. But it is not. Belying the expectations that were aroused after its unexpectedly strong performance in the General Elections of 2009, the United Progressive Alliance began a steady downward drift in terms of keeping control of the agenda of governance.

Stasis
A year later that drift has turned into a noisy stasis. The faultlines in the polity have been exposed by revelations of an unending series of high misdemeanours and scams. It began with an innocuous tweet that launched IPLgate. Then came the damning 2G scam which has paralysed Parliament. Parallel to this have been the goings-on in Karnataka and the Adarsh Society scam, and, as the year reaches a close, we have been told of the great food robbery in Uttar Pradesh and reminded of the big rice scam of UPA-I.
So we are in a peculiar bind. The world has woken up to our geopolitical importance, but our polity is too distracted to do anything about it. It is one thing to put out platitudes, as the PM did at the HT Leadership summit, when he spoke of “the great adventure” that India had entered into with its economic rise, one that would banish poverty, ignorance and disease, poor infrastructure, corruption and misgovernance.
It is quite another, to respond to the challenges that an ascendant China, a failing Pakistan and an uncertain political and economic climate in the world places on India whose record in removing illiteracy, chronic hunger and maternal mortality remains abysmal as it is.
What the world leaders will learn—and it is important enough for them— is that if the political part of the Indian system remains paralysed, the economy is running along at a handsome clip. Having weathered the recession with a growth rate of 7.9 per cent in 2009, the economy is headed for 9-plus per cent growth rate in the coming years. As the scams reveal, the growth is no thanks to the government system. Far from facilitating growth, the principal aim of government policy has been to ensure that a substantial portion of its revenues comes into the coffers of the political parties and their henchmen—the bureaucrats, policemen, middle-men and fixers.
As growth picks up, bottlenecks are becoming evident. A recent visit to western UP and Uttarakhand showed that the roads, some of them just recently widened, were clogged with goods vehicles. Minor accidents, police checkpoints (to make money), shoddy construction and unfinished portions led to traffic jams extending to kilometres. Even today it takes as much time to travel from New Delhi to Nainital by road, as it did when I was in school in the 1960s. The government claims that investment in infrastructure is increasing exponentially.
That may well be so, but who is managing it? Who runs the small towns and kasbas en route, who is it that can ensure smooth traffic, effective policing, sewage, and planned growth there? The basic (mal)administrator is still the colonial era District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police, with the panchayats and municipalities being a misnomer.

Questions
But the P-5 leaders are not merely in India to promote trade or to indulge in rhetoric. The global situation is in such a state that they are looking for concrete ways in which they can associate India to  promote the stability and prosperity of their regions and the world. The US, for example, wants to know the tangible terms in which India will act to check Chinese power, or stabilise the situation in the AfPak region. The Chinese and the Russians, on the other hand, want to ensure that India does not enhance its alignment with the western powers.
At present, however, New Delhi lacks the institutions and, more important, the inclination to think through these issues. Policy making is left largely to the bureaucracy, or a small community of strategic experts, mainly former officials. But babus can execute policy, they cannot quite make it. That remains in the realm of political leaders and, in India’s case, it still remains a work in progress.
The lack of political leadership impinges on another vital area as well— the integration of the armed forces of the union with the civilian leadership. Politicians are willing enough to appropriate funds for the armed forces modernisation, but they are unable to provide even a modicum of leadership to them in terms of directing the effort towards more effectively securing the country, leave alone furthering the country’s interests.

Answers
If the UPA government itself was the problem, it would not be so bad; someone else would replace them, even if the prospect of a wounded government limping along till 2014 does appall. But the Opposition can barely look after itself, what to talk of the country. Start with the Left which has suffered what amounts to a virtual meltdown ever since it suffered reverses in the Lok Sabha poll last year. The BJP may revel in its victory in Bihar, but it would be fooling itself if it sees a meaning there for its larger role in the country. While the BJP satraps in the states (barring Uttarakhand) are doing  well, and even managing, like B.S. Yeddyurappa, to survive scams, the central leadership remains diffuse and divided, and somewhat incoherent.
So when the P-5 leaders come visiting in New Delhi, they are met with all the formal pomp that a former colony can gather, they get a heavy dose of rhetoric, and a generous amount of business. But they cannot get the answers they are seeking: What does— or will India— as a power, stand for? Can they depend on it to promote democracy in Burma, combat Teheran’s proliferation? Will Indian heft bring Pakistan to heel, and check Beijing?
If the answer to all the questions is a yes, there is the bigger and more practical question—how? By acting in concert in the diplomatic corridors of the world? Stepping up its military-to-military relationships to underline its sense of purpose? What really does a “strategic partnership” that India has with all, including Beijing, mean? As of today we only have questions, no answers.
New Delhi will be delusional if it thinks that the world powers are knocking on its doors to kowtow to a rising (risen?) power. That kind of thinking only works for Beijing. What does seem to be happening is that, for the want of any application of mind, and a lack of political leadership, New Delhi is still trying to cling on to an equidistant, non-aligned posture on issues.
But when there is great disorder under the heavens, and there is quite a bit of it right now, maintaining equipoise no longer looks possible.
This appeared in Mail Today December 9, 2010

The uses and abuse of secrecy

Anyone even mildly familiar with the world of contemporary foreign and security policy making will realise just how banal the WikiLeaks leaks are. Sure, they have the ability to titillate us, give us some mordant quote by an ambassador or some sordid detail of a transaction, but there are really no true secrets. Did we not know that General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the Pakistan Army are the real powers in Pakistan, or that Islamabad’s psychotic obsession with India is so intense that it will not fully cooperate in the war against the Taliban and that Cold Start could be a dangerously escalatory doctrine? It did not take leaked cables to tell us that China was not for the expansion of the UN Security Council and that Saudi Arabia was paranoid about Iran.
Information technology has begun rewriting the rules of what constitutes a secret. It did not take Anne Patterson’s leaked cable to her bosses to tell us that Pakistan was expanding its nuclear arsenal rapidly. This had been detailed in a report by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) using satellite imagery in May 2009.
 
WikiLeaks
Yet, the imprimatur of a government gives the information a confirmatory context. There was a time when documents would be selectively made available to a newspaper, today we have a “bit-torrent” of information. The Supreme Court may get the authenticated versions of some 5,000 conversations, but all of them are floating around in hundreds of CDs for all those who care to seek them. 
The WikiLeaks project is, of course, difficult to classify. Its aim is not to create a revolution, expose corruption or promote pacifism. It has taken an unthinkingly naïve approach towards attacking the very concept of secrecy and, in the process, not only exposed wrongdoing and chicanery, but also endangered people by revealing their names as agents of the US, and invaded the privacy of many others unconnected to US policy goals or its own motivations.
In that sense it represents the chaotic edge of a movement that seeks to enhance the transparency of government functioning in the developed democracies of the western world. This is an acknowledgement that the people have the right to control their governments’ policies by having the right information at their command. As the Federation of American Scientists has pointed out, in May the government for the first time revealed the current size of the US nuclear weapons arsenal (5113 weapons). Later in September, again for the first time, the US government gave out figures for its intelligence budget— $80.1 billion for 2010. In the years before, intelligence bosses insisted that the figures had to be secret, because giving away the numbers would compromise intelligence gathering methods.
There are, of course, other uses of secrecy. These are more familiar to us here in India. They are to protect the reputation of individuals or to shield the corrupt. Both have been in evidence recently. Last month, the veteran journalist Inder Malhotra published two letters from Jawaharlal Nehru to the US President, pleading for an air umbrella of US combat aircraft to prosecute the war against China in 1962. The existence of the letters was known and its summary was available. But the letters themselves were not declassified. Most of the documents of the Kennedy era relating to South Asia were declassified and published in Volume IX of the Foreign Relations of the United States back in the mid-1990s. But the entry relating to the letters stated that these two letters were being withheld from declassification because even the government of India had not declassified them.
 
India
Of course, the government of India does not declassify anything. But in the case of Nehru or Indira Gandhi, they are extra-careful. The only explanation is that they want to ensure that the iconic image of these two leaders is not in any way besmirched. Obviously a letter from the arch-priest of non-alignment begging the US President for not just military aid, but a military alliance, would not play well for a generation of officials who have a possessive thing about the concept.
As for secrecy to shield the corrupt, we see it almost every day. Virtually no information relating to a controversial deal is put in the public domain. Veteran parliament watchers will tell you that the bureaucracy has honed the practice of revealing nothing in response to questions posed in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.  India has taken a giant step to end the cult of official secrecy by adopting the Right to Information Act, but the efforts of the Babu Empire to strike back and undermine the Act are evident. We had the case of a Chief Justice of India who resisted the idea of making public the assets of the judiciary and who felt that his office had to be outside the purview of the RTI.
Among the bigger limitations of the RTI is the wholesale exemption it provides to  the national security establishment from its ambit. Talk to any intelligence official or bureaucrat, and they will tell you why certain information must be kept away from the people of the country. The armed forces, for example, claim that information about charges of human rights violations or corruption will “lower the morale”, never quite wanting to respond to the  question as to whether morale gets lowered or raised if wrong-doing is exposed.
But as the WikiLeaks documents on Iran, Afghanistan and now the State Department reveal, there is nothing in the practice of good governance that needs the kind of blanket secrecy that the government of India insists on.
 
Secrets
At the heart of secrecy is the issue as to what is a secret? For obvious reasons, this is easier to define in the military/national security context, rather than the civilian one. Of course, private companies will say that their R&D, production plans and marketing strategies must also be seen as secrets. Governments will argue that information on import and acquisition plans must be secret as well since access to privileged information can be profitable. But while both have a case, the government must be judged on a different scale, since it represents all the people, and information that it has in a sense belongs to them. So far, unfortunately, the aim has been to provide public information selectively to a few who are then able to turn handsome profits from it.
In the national security context, too, it is clear that we need much sharper focus on defining what is secret and otherwise. In the era of Google Earth, banning photography of airports on grounds of secrecy is patently stupid. Capabilities are easy to figure out, but intentions are the real secret. And even here, there is a time frame. We all know that both India and Pakistan have plans to attack each other in the event of war. Given the geography, you can determine with a fair degree of accuracy the places where attacks can be launched and the capabilities the other side can bring to bear. The plans have been there since the 1950s, but what would be a great secret is, say, a plan for an attack in the next month or week.
Even while accepting that the link between capabilities and intention is a complex one, it is clear that all secrets are time-bound. The capabilities of a particular piece of equipment or a plan, or an assessment, has a particular shelf-life; there are no eternal secrets. If the concept of secrets is dynamic, there is a greater likelihood that they will remain truly secret. But those who sit on information and see it as something static, will find that it is soon devalued, or snatched away from them by the high-tech nihilists of the internet world.
Mail Today December 2, 2010
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