The unseemly controversy generated by Major General V. K. Singh’s book India’s External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing, months after it was released, is strange, to say the least. Refuting of some of the ‘facts’ mentioned by the ex-Research and Analysis Wing staffer by the government would have been a more democratic response in case of controversial, inaccurate or objectionable arguments or facts in the book. Unleashing a CBI raid on the author and the publisher is harsh and undemocratic. It could even bring charges of misuse of the CBI, one of the few policing agencies in the country, which has maintained some professional standards.

What is it in the book that has invited the ire of the government? Is there something in the book that necessitates raiding the author and the publisher for reasons of breach of Indian ‘intelligence’? R&AW is a public institution, paid for by the taxpayers’ money. Indeed, the information it gets and intelligence it gathers could be secret from the national security perspective, but its functioning has to be institutionalised enough to be transparent to the people for whom it works and who pay for it.

Those seeking to know secrets about India’s prime external intelligence service, or its network, from this 175-page book, would be disappointed. Its twelve chapters, unassumingly, though lucidly, written, tell a story nevertheless — the story of lack of accountability and transparency (even internally), corruption (including misuse of powers, authority, privileges and secret funds), organisational anomalies, ad-hocism, lack of professional ethics and so on, in the organisation which has been over-rated and considered a holy cow that must not be questioned. Is Major General Singh lying, or making stories, or writing out of personal grudges? If yes, he is liable for action under relevant legal provisions either for breach of privilege or personal contempt by those finding mention in the book. The charges of leaking official secrets appear remote, if at all they stick. The action against him obviously appears an over-reaction of a hypersensitive and susceptible politico-bureaucratic establishment interested in maintaining the status quo for narrow personal and partisan interests.

... contd.