Spy versus shy

In their spare moments our country’s spies must be feeling sorry for their counterparts in other democracies. The CIA, for example, is not only answerable to the US legislature’s Intelligence oversight committees, its files can’t remain classified for ever and the American media has a good record of analysing and exposing the agency’s more bizarre and questionable methods and operations. RAW, in contrast, does not have to suffer from institutionalised parliamentary scrutiny. All of us in the Indian media should acknowledge that our Intelligence agencies have got away lightly as far as investigative reportage goes. And, the biggest advantage of all, RAW has the Official Secrets Act that many eminent leaders over the years have apparently found reprehensible but no one has found the time to amend it, far less kill it, which is the fate it deserves.

That is why the appalling official conduct over V.K. Singh’s book — the retired major-general and ex-RAW officer wrote about the spy agency’s byzantine ways in our op-ed page yesterday — must become a rallying point for thorough reform. It is frankly astonishing that senior government figures have been mute spectators as the RAW brass has used the OSA to humiliate, raid and browbeat a citizen. The CBI told the courts that although it found good reason to confiscate Singh’s computer and papers it hadn’t found time to read the book that is supposed to have put national security at peril. This would have been funny had the issue of brute suppression of freedom of expression not been so serious. As Singh argued in this paper yesterday, if RAW found his allegations on corruption unfounded it could have arranged for the government to sue him.

Instead, the government is seeming to be complicit in arguing that information about RAW officials presiding over allegedly dodgy contracts and tenders is something citizens mustn’t know about. This is not an issue to be left only to the Administrative Reforms Commission. ARC’s head, Veerappa Moily has publicly called for reforming the OSA. That is welcome. But the proposal won’t receive political traction unless senior government figures take ownership of it. It is entirely valid to ask why the PMO isn’t letting its views be known. It is the nature and strength of democracy that silence on such issues begins to look like either endorsement or inability to alter the status quo. But the status quo must be challenged. Not just the OSA but the cosy, convenient norms under which Intelligence agencies function, as detailed by our columnist today, must be reviewed.