All's not well in the shadowy world of Intelligence Bureau

In January 1977, an officer of the IB (Intelligence Bureau) was dispatched to Rae Bareli on a special mission. He was ordered to send regular reports on the pre-election temperature of Mrs Gandhi's constituency. His reports were not to be routed through Lucknow, as would have been the normal case, but dispatched directly to New Delhi.The officer's first three reports boldly stated that unless Mrs Gandhi personally went to Rae Bareli and apologised to the people by going from door to door for misdeeds during the Emergency, she would lose the Rae Bareli election. The officer was immediately summoned to Delhi, given a severe dressing down by his director, and told to file reports in future indicating that Mrs Gandhi would win easily. The officer obliged and right up to the actual elections in March, Mrs Gandhi was being handed favourable reports about her electoral prospects. She, of course, never saw the first three reports. That pattern, according to senior sources in the IB, has persisted and almost all political intelligence reports submitted to the ruling party are guaranteed to create no ripples.A series of more recent events indicate that all's not well in the shadowy world of intelligence In December, 1980, the IB dismissed three senior officials of the organisation - B.B. Raval, A.K. Raul and Verghese Joseph. The dismissals came shortly after the officers had formed an Intelligence Bureau Employees' Association (IBEA) to air their grievances.On March 26, 1981, 15 senior officers of the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) were handed transfer orders and told to report to their new assignments within a week. All the officers had investigated cases launched by the Janata government in accordance with the Shah Commission findings. Another 30 officers who were guilty of the same "crime" are also to be transferred shortly.A day earlier, Mrs Gandhi had presented a number of awards to CBI officers for "meritorious performance". After the ceremony. it was discovered that some of the awardees had been involved in investigating cases against Mrs Gandhi and the Emergency caucus. A special committee was hastily assembled to investigate the faux pas and withdraw the awards from the concerned officers. The faux pas obviously occurred because the new members of the upper echelon in the organisation brought in by the ruling party were unaware of the past record of the awardees.By last fortnight, no less than 20 cases hied by IB personnel alone against the Government were pending in various courts, including the Supreme Court. The cases ranged from illegal dismissals to harassment, transfers and promotions. A few years ago, the prospect of an intelligence official suing the Government in a law court would have been unthinkable.Dangerous Disease: Viewed individually, the events detailed above would have caused nothing more than the odd raised eyebrow. Taken collectively, however, they form a chilling pattern and lay bare the symptoms of a dangerous disease that has overtaken the country's intelligence agencies in the last few years-near-total politicisation. Starting from the early '70s, the country's intelligence tribes have become nothing more than extensions of the ruling party; political pawns to be used with carefree abandon for covertly achieving their own political ends, all carefully shielded by the all-embracing Official Secret's Act. "We exist as long as it satisfies the egos and requirements of the ruling party," says a senior intelligence source.The consequences of that, however, are alarming. Reduced to mere errand boys of the ruling party and the prime minister, has led to growing demoralisation in the middle and lower ranks of intelligence agencies and a parallel reduction in efficiency. "We have to put up a facade of knowing everything that goes on" says an IB source, "but in actual fact, sometimes even the press knows more than we do." The politicisation extends to other areas as well. In intelligence circles, for instance, raw (Research & Analysis Wing) is now being openly referred to as Relatives and Associates Wing because of the blatant induction of relatives and friends of senior diplomats, bureaucrats and army generals.There is, however, a far more dangerous symptom of the disease. The growing discontent and disillusionment among intelligence officers that has manifest itself in the form of strikes, gheraos, legal action and the formation of employees' associations. In almost every intelligence agency, the simmering discontent is directed against the officers who originally joined on deputation but have managed to take control of the top posts in the intelligence outfits, effectively blocking the promotional avenues of direct recruits. One obvious example is the IB. When direct recruitment started in 1950 it was done with the avowed objective that deputationists would be sent back after completing their assignments. That objective has been ignored and there are currently IB officers who have served over 20 years on deputation, in direct contravention of the Government of India regulations. The fact that almost all of them are IPS officers who have formed their own power groups on the basis of their oft-displayed loyalty to the ruling party is the root of the current internal confrontation. "It is this hybrid of police and intelligence that is the biggest drawback to almost every intelligence agency in the country," says a source (Out of 14,000 IB officers, 3,000 are deputationists).Conditional Offer: The recent formation of the IBEA was seen as a direct threat to their control since no less than 10,000 IB employees signed on with the association. At first, the counter move was to declare the IBEA an illegal organization - a move that has been challenged in the Supreme Court. Reluctant to damage the reputation of the organisation, the association tried to negotiate with the prime minister's secretariat and come to some form of compromise. The message they received was that the prime minister was keen to look into their grievances and would meet them only after two conditions were fulfilled - that the association should be disbanded and the case withdrawn from the Supreme Court. Naturally, the association leaders declined the offer. The next message they received was ruder. The IB has, for the first time in its history, been forced to appoint a legal adviser.If the IB has taken such an unprecedented step it is evident that the top brass are expecting further cases to be filed against their decisions by disgruntled employees - a situation that is fraught with dangerous consequences. For one, it will expose a lot of dirty linen about the workings of the organisation. One example is the hasty appointment of staff councils to look into staff matters. The staff council is comprised oi officers who are flown in from various states at taxpayer's expense. The councils have no agenda, no minutes are circulated and no action on the points discussed have so far been taken. The result is that IB staff boycotted a meeting of the staff council last month in protest.Similarly, the formation of an employees association in raw late last year was sought to be countered by strong-arm tactics by the agency's top brass - also widely seen as a panic move. The arrest and alleged torture of 31 association activists on November 27, 1980 was followed by a spate of suspensions and dismissals. The official stand that the formation of associations in intelligence agencies would lay them open to security breaches is specious since whatever demands the association leaders have voiced are only limited to internal staff problems, which however hard the coteries in control try, cannot be suppressed for very long. Neither does the official argument for the formation of staff councils to look into staff grievances hold much water. In raw, for instance, it was agreed that staff councils would meet every three months. Since July 22, 1979, when the first staff council meeting was held, only three out of the scheduled nine have been held so far, with little to show for their superficial efforts.Meanwhile, a campaign to victimise the active members of the IBEA has been launched. The first stage is the transfer of key members to remote areas like the Sino-Indian border. Since there is no transfer policy in the IB, there is little that the officers can do. In desperation, association members have sent a letter to the prime minister asking for a meeting to thrash out their problems, but so far there has been only a deafening silence. "If she can meet anti-reservationists from Gujarat and agitators in Assam, how come she cannot meet people who have served the country so faithfully all these years," asks an IB official.Fearing Reprisals: Viewed objectively, some of the grievances and demands of the rank and file appear to be justified. Ninety per cent of the agency's senior officers are deputationist IPS officers and direct recruits now face a 12-year promotional gap that is likely to stretch even further. In fact, there are no fixed promotional rules and all inquiries as to promotional patterns are fobbed off with the excuse that they are secret. There is no welfare fund and no general insurance cover for IB staff even though their work involves considerable risks. Further, the post of director is a political appointment with no fixed tenure. Jayaram, the former director, was given three extentions because of his closeness to the power structure.The resulting discontent, according to one senior official, has led to a 40 per cent drop in efficiency and effectiveness. "Because of the way officials who investigated cases against the ruling party have been treated, nobody is prepared to take any risks for fear of reprisals later," said another IB source.The greatest danger is the threat to national security through the burgeoning court cases involving intelligence personnel which is widely seen as a culmination of years of pent-up frustrations. The obvious palliative would be to declare the IB as a National Security Agency and to introduce a separate intelligence cadre like the IAS and IPS with sophisticated training techniques. As it is, the current Rs 8 crore official budget of the IB and its equally large secret fund is being flushed down the proverbial drain.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Feb 25, 2014 09:47 IST--- ENDS ---

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All's not well in the shadowy world of Intelligence Bureau

The recent formation of the IBEA was seen as a direct threat to their control since no less than 10,000 IB employees signed on with the association. At first, the counter move was to declare the IBEA an illegal organization - a move that has been challenged in the Supreme Court.

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