Indian troop deployments in Kashmir, obtained from a monograph published by a Pakistani research institute. Read Gilani’s book (My Days in Prison) to discover how the ministry of home affairs (MHA), the Delhi Police, the IB and the Directorate General of Military Intelligence (DGMI) couldn’t figure out, among other things, whether a violation of the OSA was involved and whether information in public domain could adversely affect India’s security interests. A quote from the book says it all. A senior home ministry official said, Gilani had a document “published in Pakistan”. The home ministry, interestingly and instructively, withdrew the charge “for administrative reasons and in the public interest”.

The arrest was in public interest and later, withdrawal was in public interest. The issue isn’t the Gilani case. But had the Gilani case proceeded, we would probably have debated the OSA. But now V.K. Singh has resurrected the debate. There can’t be any argument against the government keeping secrets as long as there is a classification system that is transparent. Developed countries have such classification systems, like top secret, secret, confidential and restricted. So apparently do we, but our classification is vague, non-transparent and arbitrary and the OSA encourages this trend. It is small comfort that China’s classification is just as vague. Becoming developed, for both India and China, means becoming more transparent, accountable and open; GDP growth alone is insufficient.

Let us not also forget that the ancestor of our the OSA, the 1911 OSA in the UK, was passed at a time when there was a scare about foreign spies infiltrating society’s top echelons. That is surely not our scare now.

... contd.