Intelligence and the world of espionage are as old as history. Rameshwar Nath Kao, the first chief of R&AW, used to say that his friend, Comte Alexandre de Marenches, the French chief of intelligence during the Seventies, described this world as the best. Marenches used to say that espionage was an unscrupulous game played by gentlemen. <br /> <br /> The world of intelligence is not just the James Bond kind of fantasy, although the point about willingness to take the initiative is valid. Intelligence is more the dogged George Smiley kind of life - patient and painstaking. It needs the skills of total recall and the ability to relate to events, like those of Connie Sachs, the former queen of research at the Circus. Marcus Wolfe, the East German spy chief, was Le Carre's Karla. Romanticised in novels and vilified in real life, ultimately an intelligence agency becomes what its government wants it to be. <br /> <br /> Any government keen on staying ahead of competition and thwarting threats would need a first rate external agency manned by men and women of honour who care for the organisation to which they belong. External intelligence, espionage and covert operations are a country's first line of offence and defence. Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi and, years later, Atal Bihari Vajpayee realised this. They understood the benefit of advice from an agency that would tell them the truth as it existed and not as was desired or wished for. For this, they kept the agency in a cocoon, sheltered from coalition or regional politics. <br /> <br /> With time, the targets of espionage have changed. Newer and more complicated threats have been added to traditional military and political threats. Globalisation has brought threats to markets and resources; global terror has spawned a thriving global terror economy, where human trafficking, narcotics smuggling, gun running and money laundering feed on each other. Many of the threats are technology-driven. <br /> <br /> Intelligence is neither a science nor an art that can be taught from a textbook. It is a craft that requires aptitude and a life-long commitment. Modern-day espionage also needs super specialisations - of languages, areas and issues, of tradecraft skills acquired over years of experience in the same field and analytical skills honed over years of study of the same topic or region. Intelligence is not something that can be bought off the shelf and its analysis requires uncommon rigour and discipline. <br /> <br /> In India, too, there is a growing need to have in-house expertise dedicated to these specialisations, along with traditional espionage skills that are not lost every few years to transient passengers. It is not enough to recruit talent, difficult as it is with more lucrative and less dangerous avenues available. It is a problem of retaining talent and a problem equally of suitably handling talent that has either run aground or outlived its utility. It is no longer possible to assume that a civil service exam passed years ago qualifies a person to be an intelligence officer. <br /> <br /> The system of recruitment through a normal civil service exam was acceptable when job requirements were different. The multiple talents and expertise now required are no longer available in the civil services because people with skills and qualifications do not find government career paths attractive enough. The head of the organisation should, therefore, have the flexibility to temporarily outsource talent for specific requirements without disturbing the organisational hierarchy. Besides, each rookie who joins the R&AW must believe that the rules permit him to have a fair chance to make it to the top slot. Otherwise he will not give in his best or will drift to greener pastures midstream, taking away with him years of experience. <br /> <br /> But if it is decided to deliberately downgrade a service and make it less attractive, the results will be commensurate. The R&AW is the only organisation in the Government of India that has a dedicated service and yet has been made to have a quota for birds of passage. The Indian Foreign Service does not have this, nor do the Railways or some others. Often, the organisation is considered a safe haven for those from uncomfortable cadres and services seeking temporary refuge till avenues at home improved. There was a time, at its inception, when the organisation needed experience and expertise from elsewhere, but once it was decided to form a service, the role of the transients was intended to gradually disappear. There is no reason why the R&AW should not follow the successful experience of other intelligence agencies and also recruit from outside the civil service. <br /> <br /> Intelligence agencies function best when they are not stultified into bureaucracies since this only kills initiative, discourages risk-taking and frowns upon innovation. Intelligence agencies are like restricted clubs, elitist and exclusive in many ways, which cannot afford to have nasty little sub-groups plotting against each other. It has to be a life-time commitment, not an arrangement, however long, with the officer constantly looking at his parent service to return to, should the grass get greener there. You either belong fully or you do not. There is no room for those who treat this as a part-time pursuit because of lack of other avenues. There is no revolving door. <br /> <br /> Periodic reform and upgrading to cater for future threats are necessary. But an intelligence agency loses its way if this reform is carried out by those who neither understand the system, nor empathise with it, or suspect it for its secret ways, or have a pre-determined agenda and are, at times, hostile to it. Reforms have really been more about creating quotas (how we love that word), which, instead of unifying, have only been divisive or about promotion avenues for a few. It does not really address core issues like strengthening élan in an organisation that has no other outlet, increasing professionalism and making it an attractive career opportunity in today's context. <br /> <br /> Reform endures when it evolves from within, as with all societies, and is carried out by those who understand the system. Rather than perennially tinker with and unsettle the system, it is time for the arbiters of the organisation's destiny to hold out their hand to the men and women in the battlefield of intelligence, give them an assured future and encourage them to perform better for they fight a lonely war in silence. <br /> <br /> Other countries have had reason to view the R&AW as a sinister organisation but that should be no reason for Indians to view it similarly. On the contrary, the image of a benign external intelligence agency should worry Indians just as much as a sinister internal agency should frighten them. Just because in the nature of things an intelligence agency is required to work in secret does not make it suspect. Consequently, over the years, there has been an unfortunate tendency to exercise greater and greater remote control but in reality this is only an exercise of authority without responsibility. <br /> <br /> In India, the danger is that as we globalise and privatise, there may be a tendency to believe that traditional threats have disappeared in the blossoming global bonhomie, new threats do not exist and the future holds no devils. International threats do not emerge suddenly - at least not in the intelligence world. They take time building up, bit by bit. An alert and well-endowed intelligence outfit collects the straws to weave a mat but a distracted bureaucratised agency will miss out the signs again and again. <br /> <br /> <br /> </font> <font size="2" class="greytext1"> <em>The author is Advisor to Chairman, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. <br /> <br /> Source: The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, June 21, 2006 <br /> </em> <br /> <br /> <em>* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.</em> <br />
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