Intelligence reform - finally something substantive

In the ruckus over corruption and general policy paralysis in government, a redeeming piece of news has largely gone unnoticed (and un-analysed). Manish Tewari, the otherwise insufferable spokesman of the Congress, has piloted a private member's Bill to (finally) initiate structural reforms of some sort on Indian intelligence.

The INTELLIGENCE SERVICES (POWERS AND REGULATION) BILL is an attempt to define the powers, appointments, jurisdictions and above all, oversight of intelligence agencies in India.

Bizarre as it may sound, not one intelligence agency in India today has a legislative framework notifying their work in general. All of them have been setup through executive notifications and work on completely ad hoc terms of reference. Ergo, each government has used (and misused) the intelligence apparatus as it deemed appropriate.

The mandate of the "oldest" agency, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) did not change significantly from its colonial avatar of Indian Political Intelligence (IPI), even as threats to the state morphed. Going after opposition politicians, conducting opinion polls, tapping phones and communications of politicians (on both sides) and bureaucrats - these have remained a big, some say the biggest, mandate of IB.

The decay in the capabilities of RAW, which once was the cornerstone of India's finest foreign policy achievement (1971, Bangladesh), is another case in point. While Indira Gandhi gave it a high pedestal in policy-making, Morarji Desai was openly hostile. Structurally, the bigger decay started when the Vajpayee PMO created the NSA's office as the de facto intel czar. RN Kao publicly protested, but to no avail. This got further institutionalised in UPAI, when MK Narayanan, first as Internal Security Advisor and then as NSA, became the superboss of all intel agencies (including IB, thanks to a colourless Shivraj Patil).

Above all, India remains the only country in the civilised world where intelligence agencies are not subject to Parliamentary oversight. A glaring error of commission on our approach to national security. And scams in RAW and NTRO are begging to be out in the limelight.

The new Bill tries to rectify some of the structural flaws.

First, it creates a clear reporting structure - RAW, IB and NTRO report directly to the PM. This is how it should happen, multiplicity of authorities create confusion and dilutes resources.

Second, it creates a high powered Parliamentary oversight body, the National Intelligence and Security Oversight Committee.

Third, it documents and bestows "police" powers to the three agencies. Today, none of the three can legally arrest anyone.

There are lots of missing gaps in the Bill - there is no structure of financial oversight of the agencies, it misses out key structures -SFF for example (which is an armed unit reporting to the Cabinet Secretariat) and so on. But as a start, its sorely needed. As of yesterday.