Three wasted years
India had the world’s sympathy after 26/11. And look what Chidambaram and his lackeys did with it
On the third anniversary of 26/11, it would not be out of order to look back at the “changes” which were effected to the national security mechanism post that terrible terrorist outrage. Like most government attempts to send signals of “new beginnings”, UPA-1, then on re-election mode, decided to sack its lethargic Home Minister, Shivraj Patil. It also banished the non-performing National Security Adviser, MK Narayanan, to gubernatorial loneliness, and in conformity with the greatest of Indian traditions of forming more fatuous institutions to replace the existing ones, announced the formation of a slew of new bureaucratic bodies.
One of the starkest examples of the purposefulness and déjà vu that marks the “legacy” of 26/11 is the redefined job profile of the National Security Adviser. Whoever he is, Shiv Shankar Menon is no successor to the line established by Brajesh Mishra and JN Dixit. In one of the most outrageously arbitrary government acts of dilution of a national institution ever, India’s NSA was reduced to a decorative post which no self-respecting man or woman unless madly in love with the perquisites which come with being a poodle, can accept. For, now we have a NSA who is not kept on the loop on matters concerning internal security. At best he is a dandified adjunct to the foreign office.
This knowledge, thanks to <i>Wikileaks</i>, has brought to the fore India’s worst kept secret as far as government dysfunction is concerned. Nothing except the ego of P Chidambaram powers India’s responses to global terrorism, Kashmir, Maoism, police administration, police reforms, whatever. Like all enterprises dominated by one man’s whims, India’s Home Ministry is a place where good ideas are suffocated to death and nothing except toadying before the boss is considered correct behaviour.
For its sheer breadth of scale and shocking daring, the Mumbai attacks surpassed all previous terrorist strikes on Indian soil. Because it happened right before the glare of global media in an un-dense news season (the US presidential election had just got over), the Indian government and its terrorism-fatigued people had the rare opportunity of showing all the wounds inflicted by the Pakistani terrorism empire which previously got little attention. So, when we discuss the “legacy” of 26/11, there is both an internal and external aspect to consider.
Throughout the 2000s, India’s protestations over Pakistan’s covert and not-so-covert support to terrorism got little or no recognition at the highest levels in Washington DC. So, in more ways than one, 26/11 was a greater Pakistani public relations disaster than an Indian internal security one. All through 2008 ISI-sponsored modules had been merrily banging away — in Bangalore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Delhi — exposing all the chinks in the Indian armour. On the morning of 26/11, there were no longer any secrets about India’s vulnerability to terrorism. India’s police and intelligence systems were in a shambles. But Pakistan moved in for the overkill — and quite lost its way.
India’s foreign office should have made great capital of 26/11. But it performed one of the most spectacular <i>faux pas </i>imaginable at Sharm el Shaikh. The joint statement of July 16, 2009 announced an agreement that “action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process (between India and Pakistan) and these should not be bracketed”. The implication was that Pakistan could continue to condone — or even encourage — acts of terror by its nationals in Mumbai and elsewhere, but normal bilateral engagement would not be affected. The man whose “bad drafting” caused all of it, is today the NSA. So much for “accountability” in the post-26/11 age.
The formation of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on the lines of the US Federal Bureau of Investigations was supposed to be a big leap forward in terms of strengthening the administrative response to terrorism. The Bill to create it was produced in Parliament in record time — just a fortnight after the last terrorist had been silenced in the burning Taj Mahal Hotel. It seemed to many that UPA-1 had been planning a NIA all along and only an excuse to bring the Bill to Parliament was awaited.
The move was fraught with Constitutional inconsistencies and administrative tunnel vision. Its underlying assumption was that a “national” police organisation is always superior to one from the States, though there is no evidence to suggest that. State police forces may be hamstrung for funds and weakened by political interference, but at least they have their ears to the ground and could teach the parachutists from Delhi a thing or two about cracking cases. The record of the CBI in swinging favourable prosecutions, for instances, cannot hold a candle to any of the State CIDs. Lacking their own source networks, police stations and other infrastructure in the States, the CBI has always been at the mercy of their host States’ police wings. Sometimes the IPS brotherhood helps, sometimes not.
The NIA’s book, at least in the first three years of its founding, has been empty. It operates from a mall in Jasola on the border of Delhi and Noida. Its formation was welcomed by IPS officers stationed in Delhi who were reluctant to return to their home cadres. But nobody except them wants to join it. Delhi and UP police were requested to contribute personnel, but both refused saying, and rightly too, that they are already way under-staffed. The July 13, 2011 bomb blast at Jhaveri Bazaar in Mumbai gave the nation its first look at how the NIA is ridiculed by State police units. The “national” (read Delhi-based) TV channels made much song and dance about the NIA “taking over” the investigation of the blast right on the ill-fated evening. But, slighted by the ATS of Mumbai Police, the bright boys of Delhi had to beat a retreat. A full month after the tragedy, Chidambaram, who took the slight personally, flew to Mumbai to take the matter up with his own party’s Chief Minister, Prithviraj Chavan. But Chavan refused to oblige. Another month passed and, as could be expected, there was not much headway in the investigation.
The Delhi High Court blast of October gave the NIA its long-awaited break. At last it had a “truly national” case with no pesky State policemen to assert turf rights. But the way in which it has conducted itself does not contribute much to its credibility. Some youngsters from Kashmir have been hauled away to custody and all kinds of stories about their “guilt” have been planted in the Press. But large holes are already exposed in its investigation tactics. The parents of the boy allegedly “nabbed in Bangladesh” has told the Urdu press that her son willingly flew back to Delhi from Bangladesh to clear his name and the NIA used the draconian UAPA to throw him into jail. The nation may never know the true story because under the terms of this Act, a man can be held without bring produced in court for 60 days. Besides, the “mastermind” of the plot is supposed to be somebody who suffers bouts of epilepsy. This the NIA acknowledges, but the Kashmiri Press alleges he is mentally challenged.
Credibility is an important friend to have if a government has to win its subjects’ confidence in the war against terrorism. UPA-2 had public sympathy with it after 26/11 and the nation was willing to forgive all its failures of the previous five years. But under Chidambaram and his lackeys, everything was scuttled away.
The writer is Special Correspondent, The Pioneer