In spying on politicians we are no different from the ISI

On Monday, the National Technical Research Organisation celebrated its seventh birthday. I was not at the party, but I can guess that the atmosphere was not particularly celebratory. Suddenly an agency that should neither be seen nor heard, has become the centre of a scandal alleging that it had tapped the phones of four prominent politicians, including one from the ruling party.
There is something curious in the NTRO figuring in such a controversy. As is well known, the outfit is meant to gather strategic technical intelligence, so why was it involved in a tawdry wire-tap of politicians which is more up the Intelligence Bureau’s alley? Or, in the way of spooks, are we being led down the wrong alley ?
Though no one is saying it outright, fingers are pointing to M.K. Narayanan, the former National Security Adviser who was the supervisory authority over the NTRO and the IB in the period that the alleged malfeasance took place. Narayanan, a former IB officer has made great contributions to national security, but his real forte has been “political security”, or gathering political intelligence for the party in power, in his case, the Congress.

Turf
Even so, it is worth asking why the NTRO and not the IB? The equipment in question and the taps were technologically trivial. Shohgi communications in NOIDA advertises its SCL-5020 device capable of passive tapping of 16 two-way calls at a time. Such devices are now fairly routine with state police and central law enforcement bodies.
Is the NTRO being fingered to cut it down to size ? It is no secret that neither the IB, nor the R&AW really cottoned on to the idea of a dedicated high-tech agency from which they could task electronic intelligence. Indeed, in his years as NSA, Narayanan treated the agency as a step-child and it was only in the wake of the Mumbai attacks that its long-pending grants for high-tech equipment were cleared. What he did do was to place some top IB officers in the agency. One wonders whether these officers played a role in the impugned episode, if indeed the NTRO was actually involved.
The NTRO has been set up to deal with the larger challenge of technical intelligence which can range from what comes out of the internet to satellite imagery and missile tracking. While there is some overlap with what organisations like the IB, Aviation Research Center and the Defence Intelligence Agency do, the mandate was to set up an agency where expensive assets such as super-computers and high-end space-based sensors could be concentrated. The average background of an NTRO staffer is technical and scientific and they are unfamiliar with the tactical world of intelligence which involves tapping individual phones. If someone has led them up the garden path, it is the duty of the government to find out what happened. It would be a travesty if the incident is used as a pretext to hobble the NTRO.


The MHA has been planting all kinds of stories about how conversations could have been inadvertently recorded. This is not the way interception equipment works. In an area as large as two kilometers square at the heart of New Delhi, there are thousands of calls and SMSs floating around. A portable unit has a limited capacity to intercept conversations and its activities have to be focused on some pre-set telephone numbers.
The manner in which official agencies fight their turf battles can be ruthless and scary. There are three men in jail without trial for the last three years in the so-called National Security Council Secretariat spying scandal. Some of the murky evidence suggests that they are there because they sought to create a computer network for sharing information on terrorism. Afraid of losing its exclusive control on terrorism issues, the IB has railroaded the men.

Legacy
Telephone tapping in a democracy is always hazardous business, yet as we know it, it happens. Anyone, including the politicians whose phones were allegedly tapped believed that such things don't happen, is lying. At least three of the “victims” have held executive positions in the central and state governments and know that the police can and do tap phones. This is especially true of Mr Advani the former Home Minister who, according to one former Intelligence chief, sought tit-bits of political information gleaned through taps every day.
Going by the legal position, only the Union Home Secretary and his counterparts in the states are authorised to order taps. The reality is somewhat different. Taps take place all the time. Police officials simply lean on the telephone exchange personnel, and pay them off, to conduct what are technically illegal taps, intelligence officers simply do it without a by-your-leave, using equipment that leaves no traces in our digital age. So ubiquitous is the equipment, that a couple of private parties have also acquired it to dig dirt on their rivals.
There are three kinds of intercept activities. The first is for fighting crime, espionage or terrorism. The second is linked to developing a picture of adversary military dispositions. The third, which is unique to India, is to keep the government of the day informed of the activities of the opposition and the key members of the government itself. You will recognise of course, the colonial legacy in this. In British times, the key function of the IB was to track the national movement. Telephone and telegraph taps and interception of letters formed an important part of their modus operandi.

Oversight
Unfortunately, 60 years or so after the British left, the IB hasn’t quite gotten off this groove. For this, the current crop of political leaders is to blame. They are the people who should have shut down the political wing of the IB, but they have not because every government sees it as a crown jewel or talisman that enables it to ward off the Opposition or dissidents. Sadly, on the matter of political use of the “agencies”, there is only a difference of degrees between India and Pakistan; military leadership makes the ISI cruder than the IB or R&AW.
Intelligence officers will vehemently deny any political intelligence gathering and insist that they work within legal red-lines and that phone intercepts are vital towards gathering evidence of terrorist crimes and warning of potential terrorist attacks. But other countries, too, face similar threats, yet they do not allow their intelligence services to impinge on the privacy of the ordinary individuals, leave alone politicians.
Tapping the phones of US nationals is prohibited in America. Permission only comes through a single judge Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. If he turns down the application, it goes before a review court. There are currently 11 such judges who are appointed by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Despite this, the Bush administration went ahead and tapped phones of US nationals after Nine-Eleven.
More than legal processes, countries like the US ensure that there is bipartisan political supervision of the dangerous powers that intelligence agencies have. India is the only democracy in the world that has no such supervision.
Technical intelligence gathered through taps and other means is a valuable and vital means of protecting our democracy. But its unchecked use can and will undermine our liberties.
Effective political control and direction of the intelligence services is vital for a healthy relationship between the dark world of intelligence and the society at large. It’s high time such controls were instituted in India as well.
This article appeared in Mail Today April 22, 2010

The populists have hijacked the UPA agenda

A year into the second United Progressive Alliance government and the overwhelming feeling you get is one of drift. Or is it that too many people are grabbing at the steering in the boat called the UPA preventing it from navigating a clear course? The Congress-led government seems to be a victim of its own success. While the success is partial, considering its coalition-based majority in Parliament, the demands seem to be total, from those who want to cash in on a dividend that has yet to be put in the credit column of the bank ledger.
Primary among these are from the liberal or “socialistic” wing of the party who want the rising monetary resources of the government to be used in ever-greater quantities for social welfare programmes. In the process, not only do they insist on putting fiscal stress on the country’s financial system, but also, and more importantly, ensuring that the country cannot exploit the tiny window of opportunity that has opened up to get on to the track of double-digit economic growth.
So we have the spectacle of tens of thousands of crore rupees being shoveled into programmes that neither create assets to transform the countryside, let alone ever reach the people it is intended for.

Poverty
The issue is not that we should not feed the starving or provide succour to the needy, but of the need to evolve processes which will transform them into productive and fulfilled members of society. India’s socialistic bleeding heart policies seem aimed at keeping people permanently dependent on the hand-out mode.
Last week in a move to shovel some more money, the number of poor in India formally went up by 100 million. The Planning Commission issued a fiat that declared that 37.2 per cent of Indians were below the poverty line, not 27 per cent. Every country has a BPL line, even the rich Americans and Europeans, and there is an arbitrariness in the process of defining who is poor in a particular society. But in the case of India, the whole process is a hit and miss affair.


As an article by V.K. Ramachandran et al in Tuesday’s The Hindu pointed out, the official BPL figures are probably not worth the paper they are written on. The sad truth is that while all the Jawaharlal or Rajiv yojanas look grand on paper, there are serious question marks about their efficacy. Grand legislation of the Bismarckian variety promising universal education, the right to work and food is good politics, but poor policy. The tawdry reality sinks in when you stir out of New Delhi and find the money for the schemes going into an endless sink of corruption.
Earlier this week, the authorities caught three senior income tax officers taking bribes. Sadly, they are the norm rather than the exception and their fault happens to be that they were caught. Anecdotal evidence suggests that corruption has now become all pervasive and leaves nothing untouched from mega-projects to the office stationery. Most social welfare schemes are prone to the crassest kind of corruption because they steal from the poor and the needy.
It is true that it is easier to point to the faults than to provide a remedy. The fix cannot be found in technology options such as e-governance or coupons. In the Indian context, even they will be corrupted. It lies in liberating the people from the feudal patronage system of the government. Through history the feudal system worked in such a way that down the line each feudatory kept what he wanted for himself as part of the largesse; the people fended for themselves.
No one will argue that malnutrition, hunger, human rights abuses do not exist, and that the Indian state should not make any effort to ameliorate them. Leave alone the moral imperative, the state should act from the pragmatic impulse which understands that only better fed, healthy and educated citizens can become productive members of
society.
However, the issue is the balance that must be struck at any given point in time between what can be spent on a social safety net, and what is needed to ensure a productive and growing economy which enables people to look after themselves. There has to be an effort to understand that we cannot live on a diet of populism alone, that there must be a concept of short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.

Gujarat
Take the challenge of stagnant agriculture that we are confronting today. We need deep reform involving water management, electricity pricing, market mechanisms, and so on to make our agriculture productive. Just what can be done, too, is staring us in the face. The Gujarat state has had a growth rate averaging 9.6 per cent in the past decade because it has acted in these areas according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly written by Tushaar Shah, Ashok Gulati et al in December 2009. Remarkably the paper points out that the major locus of growth was the arid Saurashtra, Kutch and north Gujarat, and not the command area of the Narmada dam. According to the authors, the BJP government “has actually devoted a great deal of energy and resources to accelerating agricultural growth through a broad spectrum of policy initiatives.” These include 1) creating more than 1 lakh water bodies allowing groundwater to be recharged and therefore allowing 2) multiple cropping and higher value agriculture; (3) market access; (4) road and other infrastructure. “Gujarat is the only state whose groundwater balance has turned positive in recent years,” state the authors. There are, of course, specificities that have been responsible for the Gujarat success story such as the use of Bt cotton and generally good rainfall, but a key cause was better water management. State chief minister Narendra Modi may be rightly reviled for the 2002 massacre of Muslims, but this is no reason why the lessons from the Gujarat agricultural “miracle” cannot be applied elsewhere.

Reform
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is someone who understands the issues well and knows what must be done. There is a limited window that the country has to remain on the path of sustained high economic growth. To provide immediate relief to the poor and to permanently change their situation through better healthcare, education, skills and quality jobs, you need a booming economy which has its own and urgent need for resources.
But the party seems unclear about the path it must take. Bleeding heart populism has been a part of its DNA. But there is only so much that throwing money at a problem, or raising slogans and creating statutes, can achieve.
The country needs much more extensive reform of its governing structures for solutions to problems which are structural and chronic. A corrupt and inept bureaucracy cannot deliver anything and prevent everything from happening. The solutions lie at the very fountainhead of the system— in the conduct of politics and governance of the country.
This is the challenge the Congress confronts. But as of now it seems to be more taken up with the shenanigans of the IPL rather than the slew of weightier issues that are there.
This article appeared in Mail Today April 22, 2010

India is also high on the hit list

The nuclear security summit that ended today in Washington is just one element in the US’ ambitious strategy to retain the centrality of nuclear weapons in its security, and at the same time minimise, if not eliminate, the danger it faces from the nuclear weapons held by other countries, “loose nukes” from some rogue state’s arsenal, or a dirty bomb made from easily available nuclear materials.
As things stand, India would be the second country to be the target of a loose nuke or a dirty bomb. Israel, of course, would be a close competitor. But if you were to prioritise the countries by the ease with which such a horrific act of terrorism could be executed, India would, unarguably head the list.
The US and Israel have created elaborate shields. They may fail, but at least they will have had the comfort of believing that they did all what was possible. On the other hand, India has not even been trying. It is yet to secure its land and sea border from the movement of terrorists and smugglers, and though its airports are reasonably secure, there is little or nothing being done for its sea ports.

Fissile
Whether concern for this issue is what persuaded Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to take time away from a somewhat full plate of crises back home and go to the US is not clear. Certainly, there is little in the actions of the government to suggest that the possibility of a dirty bomb or an illicit nuke is something that it worries about. Experts now say that the cobalt wire whose radiation has made six men seriously ill in New Delhi last week was, in all likelihood, imported as scrap. That means it came through one of the country’s ports, and came through undetected. It would have been a trivial task to check such a cargo considering that the radiation would have triggered off a dosimeter, had one been there in the first place.
Given the high levels of security at nuclear weapons storage sites, the chances of weapons falling into the hands of the bad guys are low. In addition, most modern weapons have systems that can disable a device should it fall in wrong hands. There has been no known leakage of Indian fissile material that could be used to make weapons or even a dirty bomb. But there could always be a
first time.
According to physicist R. Rajaraman, as of 2008, India had produced some 779 kg of weapons grade plutonium, of which 130 had been used for making weapons. In addition there was some 2,550 tonnes of spent fuel from India’s unsafeguarded power plants as of 2007.
Dirty bombs have not been used in any terrorist incident as such. But security officials worry about the psychological and, possible actual harm caused by a conventional IED in which fissile material is packed instead of the usual nails or ball bearings. Most countries, including India, now have specific rules about disposal of medical and other devices using radioisotopes. But the scrap industry around the world often gets medical scanners, food irradiating devices and mining equipment going back to the 1970s containing radioactive metals such as cesium 137 or cobalt 60.
India, is a well known destination of scrap material and it does not even have a perfunctory check for radioactive contamination. A match-head sized piece of cesium 137 may not do much if it touches your hand, but if it gets into your lungs, you are bound to die. By the same measure, a speck of weapons grade plutonium is enough to kill a human being.
The biggest threat in this context that India confronts is containerised cargo coming from abroad. The country has some 12 major and 200 minor ports. As of now there is no screening of the cargo that comes enclosed in containers. It’s been four years since a decision was taken to install scanners in Indian ports. Today even the big ones like Kandla do not have scanners, leave alone the smaller ports. Even physical checks are limited, given the sheer volume of traffic. The customs officers or police usually open the container, peer inside, and that’s about it. As it is, the IAEA’s sleuths have pointed to the fact that some contaminated scrap is often smuggled inside lead-lined boxes or beer kegs to prevent their detection.

Scrap
Last February, the then Indian Navy chief Sureesh Mehta, at a seminar on maritime security, called for urgent measures to step up port security. He pointed out that nuclear materials are just one aspect of the problem. The huge containers can and many officials believe, are, being used to smuggle weapons, ammunition and explosives.
In 2004, ten people were killed in a scrap plant when some of the scrap, which was actually disused mortar shells, went off in a Ghaziabad steel plant. In the hue and cry thereafter, it was discovered that there were over 30 containers lying in Kandla port that had been seized by officials because the scrap contained war materials in the form of mortar shells and artillery ammunition that had been left over from the Iran-Iraq war.
The interlocking elements of the US plan to protect itself from the nuclear threat are contained in the proliferation security initiative and the container security initiative. The PSI is quite straightforward in that it involves the seizure of ships or aircraft carrying nuclear material. The CSI is more complex. Besides screening every container entering the US, it involves American customs agents being located in foreign ports to clear cargo destined for the US.

Chain
Both the projects look reasonable at first sight, but are plainly geared at securing the US first. The PSI has clear political overtones since it appears to be targeting countries designated as “rogue” by the US. But it could land India in difficulties since one of the “rogues” happens to be Iran with whom India has to conduct significant geopolitical business. Despite its awful record, Pakistan has been handled with kid-gloves in this matter.
Pakistan poses a unique problem not just for the world, but India. The reaction of some Pakistanis to the Mumbai attack has shown that there are many in the country who have little sympathy for India. It is not just a matter of schadenfreude, but a positive hatred for India. In this context it is not far-fetched to imagine a scenario where a rogue official, of the A.Q. Khan variety, leaks nuclear material or, horror, a weapon, to a
jehadi group.
The CSI is a model that India could consider because if applied to Indian ports and Indian cargos, it would directly enhance Indian security. If India can afford it, it should get its own security personnel to certify cargo traveling to Indian ports. But the least we can do is to scan every container coming into Indian ports. It is not as though the plans are not there. But they remain to be implemented. In this context it is important to note that cargoes in all ports which receive imported goods must be scanned because the chain will be only as strong as its weakest link.
Summitry is well and good as things go. But when it comes to national security, substance must always be privileged over style and symbol. The US is thinking ahead to secure itself, so should we, keeping our peculiar circumstances in mind.
This appeared in Mail Today April 14, 2010

Don't send in the army yet, but learn from them

The doyen of modern military thinkers, Carl von Clausewitz said that war was the extension of politics by other means. The Maoists understand this dictum well since their icon, Mao Zedong, said equally famously that power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Unfortunately, the Indian state has yet to comprehend the link between politics and the military.
Because they claim to speak for the poor and wave red flags, most Indian politicians are unable to understand the mortal threat Maoists pose to the nation. We need to quickly grasp, that, at this juncture at least, the only way we can meet the political challenge of the Maoists is through military means.
Why is it that in Kashmir, counter-insurgency operations in the urban and semi-urban areas are left to the police forces, including the CRPF, and the task of handling the larger groups of militants in the forested heights of the Pir Panjal and the Rajwar area is taken on by the Army? The answer is simple. In terms of training and their working the police are most effective where the militants have to be ferreted out of the populace with the use of ground intelligence. Whereas the Army alone is equipped and oriented to handle larger groups of insurgents who are well-versed in guerilla tactics.

Wrong-headed
This simple truth of the Indian experience in counter-insurgency is staring at us in the face, yet, the mandarins of New Delhi are unable to see it. The media, too, has been knocking on wrong doors. Neither KPS Gill nor Prakash Singh have really dealt with insurgencies involving thousands of armed men who are organised like an army and operate freely in a large geographical area. Such experience only resides with the Indian Army— or in a specialised unit like the Assam Rifles.
Ambushes are a devastating military tactic that the Indian Army understands well. Besides the element of surprise, the ambusher has the luxury of being able to site his own deployments and carefully prepare what is called the “kill zone”.
The army has a long institutional memory that encapsulates the experience of Burma in World War II, the Naga uprising of the 1950s and the Sri Lanka campaign of 1987-90. Perhaps no one could beat the Nagas in laying deadly ambushes. But in no one incident did the Army lose 76 men. The maximum I have been able to research is some 14 29 who were killed on April 1, 1957. So ambush and counter-ambush are basic small-unit tactics taught to all army personnel.


Caught in an ambush, even highly skilled forces find the going tough; for the CRPF company in Dantewada, the chance of escape was nil. Neither through training, nor doctrine and equipment, is the CRPF, or the BSF, oriented towards such combat. That is the reason why Maoist ambushes of police teams in Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal have been so devastating and one-sided.
As it is, there are chilling parallels in the Green Hunt strategy of sending in small groups of paramilitary to hold the ground to enable development activity, with the 1961 decision to send Indian forces in penny packets across the Sino-Indian border in what was optimistically called the “forward policy.” The Chinese military response to this fat-headed effort led to a disastrous military defeat for India. The Green Hunt’s disaster is only now becoming manifest.
Sending in ill-trained paramilitary forces where others fear to tread, too, is not a new development either. In April 1971, after General Sam Manekshaw turned down Indira Gandhi’s suggestion that the Army act in East Pakistan immediately, the government decided to entrust the task to the BSF. According to Lt Gen J.F.R. Jacob, the BSF commander K.F. Rustomji boasted that his forces would lead a victory parade in Dhaka in a short matter of three weeks. The BSF and their Mukti Bahini allies were so badly plastered by the Pakistan Army, that in May 1971 the government promptly handed over the security responsibility of the entire border to
the Army.

Support
Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram has no doubt spoken in shock and anger when he termed the Maoists as barbaric and decried their cowardice in fighting from the jungle. The facts, however, suggest that a better trained and motivated force used a legitimate military tactic to wipe out an entire CRPF company.
The only way to respond to this challenge is to meet it in kind. Unfortunately, there is no indication that either the government or the Home Ministry are even aware of the nature of the threat, leave alone any idea as to how to confront it. The Home Secretary’s bleating about “pressure bombs” reveals his ignorance of the fact that pressure mines are the basic weapons of insurgents and not undefeatable atomic weapons.
The same holds true for his quick rejection of the use of air power. To not do so is to deny yourself an advantage. The government has been rightly reluctant to use helicopter gunships ever since the Chavakacheri incident in Sri Lanka where scores of civilians died in a strike that ignited a fuel bunker. They were right, too, in not using them in the crowded landscape of Kashmir where the excellent road network enables the forces to reach any spot within the hour or less.
The jungles of Chattisgarh are different and air support could be the only means of assisting beleaguered columns, especially those under ambush. If appropriate rules of engagement are framed to avoid strikes in villages— whether or not Maoists were suspected to be there— there is no reason why gunships cannot operate there.

Leaders
The problems of a police-led counter-insurgency campaign are fundamental. Normally CRPF and BSF battalions, which are in themselves one thousand or so strong, are deployed in company-sized formations of some 100-120 men. These may be spread out in an unconnected fashion. The company commanders and battalion commanders are cadre officers, whereas most of the senior officers belong to the Indian Police Service who are most likely not to have served with the battalions at an operational level.
The army, on the other hand does not deploy anything less than a battalion which can be anywhere from 800-1000 men. While these are divided into companies, the command and control is exercised at the battalion level by a commanding officer who deploys his companies in a mutually supporting role.
Army officers learn combat craft along with their men. Their first posting is with the jawans in mountain pickets, and their experience is gathered in long-range patrols and operations in Kashmir or the North-east. The vital bonding that takes place between an officer and a soldier in the army at a lower level serves in good stead when confronted with an emergency like an ambush. Given their rural and semi-educated background, Indian jawans require good training and leadership to be effective, whether in the Army or police. But while the Army caters for this, the police units do not.
This is not an argument for sending in the army to take on the Maoists, yet. There are several other options before the government. It could set up a new Assam Rifles like force which is officered by Army personnel, matches the Army in its training, but is run by the Home Ministry.
The other is to sharply upgrade the quality of the existing CRPF units through better training and provision of better officers. In the meantime, perhaps, the Home Minister should persuade his Home Secretary to confine himself to running the day-to-day affairs of the ministry, and get himself a new security aide— an experienced Army officer— to advise him on the military aspects of tackling the Maoists.
This piece first appeared in Mail Today April 8, 2010

The past is never a good guide to a country's future

There is something pleasurable about nostalgia. The process of looking back is always selective and air-brushes away the more difficult and unpleasant episodes of memory. So it seems to be with Indian policy towards Pakistan and the United States. There is a longing for the days when a single-window operated in Islamabad. President-General Pervez Musharraf decided everything and a deal with him, meant a deal with Pakistan. Likewise, the era of George W. Bush was as uncomplicated as the man. The US President had this thing for New Delhi, and all we had to do was to ask. Underpinning all this was the economy, climbing steadily towards double digit growth.
The situation today is bewildering. No one is clear what the President of Pakistan controls, and what the Prime Minister does. And this is not counting what provincial politicians and the Chief Justice manage. The Army has resumed its authority as the default power and runs whatever does not seem to be run by the others. As for the US, our relationship seems to be confined to symbols — the White House dinner last year and the forthcoming Obama visit and so on. The focus in Washington is so determinedly crisis oriented that India has gone off its radar screen.

Reality
In fact the US has just given us an object lesson on how big powers conduct their relations. Though dripping with false conviviality, the “upgraded” US-Pakistan strategic dialogue was a cold blooded affair. The US needs Pakistan to execute its Afghanistan policy, and so, everything must be done to secure that end. So, notwithstanding New Delhi’s discomfiture, Washington has begun the third cycle of its strategic partnership with Islamabad. There is no place in this cycle for a similar relationship with New Delhi at this juncture, indeed, if its success requires excluding India, so be it.


Of course, the warning bells should have rung at the time New Delhi was excluded from the London Conference on Afghanistan. Had we been as important a player as we thought we were, that would not have happened. Now, we know that the moment the United States and the West decide, India will be asked to begin winding down its presence there. If not, the projects we aid, and our consular outposts will become terrorist targets.
In great measure this is a consequence of the effective power we wield, as against the potential or even the self-assumed power. India brings little to the US table, except its potential. Its armed forces simply lack exportable power and its politicians the will to commit these forces in pursuit of any policy but the defensive. Economically, India is still struggling to stabilise its growth track which is now being buffeted by the structural weaknesses of its agriculture and infrastructure. The root of all three problems lie in India’s dysfunctional political system that refuses to engage with its military on one hand, or undertake deep reform of the political system to match governance with the promise of electoral democracy.
In that sense, all the problems can be fixed. But it requires a much higher order of leadership than we have available. The present quality has been made painfully evident in the recent weeks through the twin fiascos of the Women’s Reservation Bill and the Nuclear Liability legislation. The issue is not so much whether the two bills are needed or not, there are valid arguments for and against for both of them. The question is about the parliamentary prowess of the Congress, or, to be more accurate, the lack of it. The politics around the two bills have actually showed up the Congress to be like the emperor without clothes.

Effort
The party has been behaving as though it has a two-third majority in both houses of parliament. Despite its improved standing after the 2009 general elections, the fact is, of course, that it runs a coalition government with allies who are not as united as they appear at first sight. There is an argument that the Women’s Bill is the electoral master-stroke that will bring the Congress its majority. Even if it were to happen, that would be an illusory victory. The party needs to establish itself through the success of its policies in a range of substantive areas — food security, employment, healthcare, infrastructure development and so on. Disarming adversaries through legislative manoeuvre helps, but only temporarily, as V.P. Singh learnt when he brought down Mandal reservations on the country.
India’s ability to change its external environment is limited. In today’s world, even the mighty US is finding it difficult to get Islamabad to do its bidding. So, New Delhi does not have the luxury of a single-window clearance in Islamabad, or a friend at the very top of the American system. But our leaders do have the option of influencing their internal surroundings.
The success of the Union home ministry should serve as an example. Because the task of creating an effective counter-terrorism shield has just about begun, we may still be hit by terrorist attacks, but we will know that we have at least tried to block them. We must, likewise, have the comfort of knowing that we have done our best to deal with the complex challenges of our relations with Afghanistan, Pakistan, China or the US.

Reform
There are things that the Manmohan Singh government can do better, without creating the political eddies that threaten the stability of its government. Foremost among these is the reform of the government system viz, the bureaucracy and the secretariat. Just what reform can achieve is evident in the revitalised home ministry. A determined Minister has been able to bring about visible change in a short space of a year and a couple of months. A similar effort is needed in two ministries that deal with national security issues — the ministry of external affairs and the ministry of defence. Both these have remained untouched by reform and their political leadership is, at best, indifferent.
The last year has been a trying one for India, as well as the world. The economic melt-down has altered the rhythm of global politics. The rise of China has come along with a more complicated Pakistan, the deep crisis in the US has impacted on the project of creating a stable, secular Afghanistan.
India’s options are not easy. But what we do need is a government that works at its full power. The country will not be able to cope with a government de-rated by inefficient ministers and indifferent bureaucrats. Looking back may provide illusory pleasure, but the need is to focus relentlessly on the future.
This article first appeared in Mail Today March 30, 2010

Congress is Shaken and Stirred

The UPA government must get its act together

What a difference a week makes in politics! Last Tuesday, the Congress was reveling in its victory in pushing the women’s reservation Bill through the Rajya Sabha. Commentators were extolling the strategic genius of Sonia Gandhi for the ‘historic’ move that was going to forever transform Indian politics. A week later, things look somewhat different. In a double whammy, the government has been forced to put off the women’s Bill for the time being, as well as defer the tabling of the Nuclear Liabilities Bill, a measure close to the heart of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The coalition that appeared solid a year ago looks shaken, if not shaky.
With the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party withdrawing support from the United Progressive Alliance, newspapers and magazines have been once again counting the numbers in the Lok Sabha. Given their ideology and the existing parliamentary arithmetic, no party or combination of parties, appears to be able to replace the UPA. But the very articulation of this issue, a year after the UPA was brought back to power with a near-majority bespeaks of the serious flaws in the political management of the coalition and the competence of the government.

Liability
Take the Nuclear Liability Bill. The entire episode: the decision to table it, the absence of 35 Congress MPs despite a whip at the time of tabling, and its sudden withdrawal, has ham-handedness written all over it. It would have been a good idea for the government to have circulated a draft of the bill, explained its provisions, encouraged some debate and discussion, built up political support and then finalised it. Instead, it used the stealth approach and the provisions of the Bill that we are talking about are those leaked by environmental groups.
Everyone knows that in India, the judicial system does not give the kind of humongous damages that can bankrupt a company or an individual. On Tuesday, for example, the Delhi High Court awarded a compensation of Rs 7 lakh to the family of a truck driver who was shot dead by a policeman in a fit of rage.
There is no rationale, therefore for capping liability in India. But there is one for the United States, and the aim of the Bill seems to be to prevent Indians affected by an accident from suing companies in the US. The simple issue here is that if the US companies wish to limit their liabilities in the United States, they should get the US Congress to pass the necessary law. Why ask the Indian Parliament? Of course, the bigger question is as to why the Manmohan Singh government has gone out of its way to help US suppliers. The government would be correct in its desire to offer all potential suppliers a level playing field in India, but surely, passing what appears to be a legislation that could go against the interests of Indian nationals on some future date, is not the way to go about it.

Women
The women’s Bill, too, looks somewhat different. Leave aside the patriarchal objections of the Yadavs, there are other important grounds why the Bill causes unease. Primary among these is the manner in which it will alter a basic element of our Parliamentary democracy—the relationship between the member of parliament and his or her constituency. The principle of rotating constituencies would ensure that one-third of the Lok Sabha would know that they cannot be re-elected from the same seat. This would be a disincentive towards working for the interests of their constituency and its constituents. The other pernicious impact of this would be to shift the balance of power even more towards the “High Command.” As it is, the Congress has an over-centralised political culture, and by loosening the MP’s hold on his constituency, it will make him more dependent on the goodwill of the “coterie” in New Delhi.


There has been a perfectly good idea floating around—that parties be shamed into having women constitute one-third of the list of the candidates they put up for elections. On the other hand, the parties could introduce the proportional representation system in which one-third of the party list of those elected will be women. Mixing systems, such as is being effected by the women’s reservation Bill in its present form could degrade our political system.
There is, of course, the basic objection to quotas as such. The persistence of quotas has affected India’s educational system and the public sector. What was once seen as a temporary measure has become a populist tool. There is no doubt that quotas helped create the critical mass of Dalit government employees who helped Kanshi Ram give birth to the DS-4 and then the Bahujan Samaj party. But his protégé Mayawati has done more for Dalit empowerment than all the populist efforts of the Congress party. The reason is that quotas in themselves are seen as a kind of a grant from society at large and do little to enhance the self-esteem of the recipient. On the other hand, Mayawati and the Dalits in BSP do not owe their position and achievement to anyone but themselves and what could be more liberating than this?
India needs some way of addressing the important issue of nuclear liability and breaking the pernicious hold of patriarchy in our politics and social life. This may require legislation, or it may not. But both do require a more intense and honest process than we have seen so far. The problem is the political culture of the Congress party which veers from populism on one hand, to implementing important policies through stealth. The whole point of a democracy is the ability to take a plurality of voters along with you on any given issue. In the era of coalitions, building pluralities and majorities is not easy. First, opinions and views on an issue can vary. Second, and more important, our political parties are devoid of any morality. There are parties which take one posture on an issue while in office and can take the opposite view when in opposition. No one said that governing India
was easy.

Debate
The Congress party has to stop deluding itself that it has a two-thirds majority in Parliament. It does not even have a majority. In this situation, it has no choice but to engage coalition partners, the opposition and the public, to build up support for its policies.
This said, we need to celebrate the debate and discussion that the women’s Bill and nuclear liability legislation have brought about. Mature deliberation and intense argument will actually strengthen the policy goals of transforming the lives of women and providing for nuclear liability. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Ms Sonia Gandhi are, quite laudably, people in a hurry.
But they should heed the hoarding which reads “speed kills”, and learn the fine art of defensive driving— the only kind that works on Indian roads.
Mail Today March 18, 2010