The time has come for an intelligence reboot

Indian intelligence agencies have been a pillar of India’s strength. Away from the public glare, they have helped secure India’s borders, saved Indian lives, ensured India’s interests are protected in the neighbourhood, fought or won over adversaries, and opened up pathways for Indian political leaders to make wiser choices in peace and war. Their successes are unsung, but their failures are public. For their sterling contribution to the Indian State, they deserve more support and understanding than they usually get. But that is the nature of their business.

There is, however, no other way to put it. The allegations implicating an Indian official in a plot to kill Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, in the backdrop of Canada’s allegations linking agents of the government of India with the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, do not reflect well on the Indian national security State in general and intelligence agencies in particular. These remain allegations, of course, but let us assume they have a grain of truth for the sake of this analysis. If true, they will confirm the worst fears of sceptics who believe that some features of the current regime’s internal security management — excessive reliance on intelligence agencies, the recourse to extra-judicial interventions, and willingness to violate the law and use and misuse State agencies — is manifesting itself in its external behaviour. They expose the hubris of whoever sanctioned the operation and the incompetence of those who executed it. If true, they also show poor judgment about inter-State relations, India’s comprehensive national power, and the costs and benefits associated with such an operation.

But once it is done, how does one ensure that an incident of this nature does not extract a reputational cost and corrective measures are taken — both in terms of how to handle the diplomatic crisis and how to ensure that this is not repeated? This incident will pass, and the US-India relationship will continue to deepen— primarily due to India’s past image as a responsible power and its current value in the geopolitical climate. Setting up an investigation is a good first step. Beyond that, embarking on deeper reforms will showcase that when someone in the system makes mistakes, the Indian leadership has the political wisdom and the institutional strength to course correct.

Here are five possible lessons, offered in a constructive spirit, based on a recognition of the centrality of intelligence agencies.

The first is that covert operations that entail targeted assassinations must be the last resort always, irrespective of geographies and the nature of the threat. It would be naive to say that this should never happen, for States have to do what they have to do at times to secure interests. However, the system must exhaust all options to weaken a target’s abilities, especially when dealing with a threat outside one’s borders.

The second is a clinical assessment of the power dynamic. It is possible to get away with such operations where India has greater capabilities and power than the country where the target is based. But such operations, purely because of the cost-benefit ratio, must not be sanctioned in countries which either have greater comprehensive national power or are allied with those with greater power and have the ability to impose a heavy cost.

The third is balancing the imperatives of secrecy with a recognition that as India’s profile grows, so will international scrutiny, from both friendly and adversarial governments and the international public sphere. This means that decisions of this nature must be taken in a deliberative manner, involve actors outside the intelligence set-up and include those who are in the business of diplomacy. This is because those focused on security have, purely due to the nature of their mandate, a narrower view, while those involved in overseeing external relations are acutely aware of the multiple dimensions of a particular relationship and can provide a broader viewpoint.

The fourth is renewing a discussion on both the legal basis (the Research and Analysis Wing is not rooted in law) and legislative accountability of intelligence agencies. India stands as an exception among larger democracies in not having parliamentary mechanisms, especially intelligence committees, which can keep an eye on agencies. To be sure, there are the imperatives of secrecy but there are also ways of ensuring that members of such committees are bound by additional oaths of secrecy. Congress MP Manish Tewari had once introduced a private members bill to both regulate the manner of the functioning and exercise of powers of agencies within India and beyond and provide for the coordination, control, and oversight of such agencies. This will help add a layer of oversight and prevent mistakes.

And finally, there must be very careful personnel management of agencies, and this includes both at the level of the leadership as well as operatives. Prolonged tenures and the lure of repeated extensions skew incentives and dampen the morale at the top rung of an agency. Assigning people not trained adequately in intelligence operations leads to badly conceived, poorly planned, and terribly executed operations. And letting inter-services battles fester within agencies leaves room for errors.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and NSA Ajit Doval have the power and the credibility to ensure correctives in a system that has long needed reform. It is time for them to move organisations known to be resistant to change. This will help create a more powerful Indian security apparatus that will inevitably face greater and newer threats from outside. It will reaffirm India’s status as a responsible power. And it will ensure that mistakes, if they were indeed made, are not repeated again.

The views expressed are personal