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A Tribune Special
Cracking the cocoon |
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Profile
On Record
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A Tribune Special
The need for a federal agency has been debated for quite some time. However, consensus has been eluding more on the issue of political gains rather than the need of the nation. It is regrettable that we required a jolt like Mumbai to come out of slumber and take this timely and much-needed step. The terror strikes in Mumbai have created an environment where some decisive action is feasible. If any systemic improvement is possible this is the time to do it. The rhetoric of intelligence failure has lost its meaning. If our intelligence is failing us every time, we only have to fix the problem rather than waiting for successive failures one after another. In any case, we cannot expect Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) to send us advance intelligence about terror attacks. There was and still is a possibility that like all earlier terror attacks, the one in Mumbai will also become a painful memory that nothing will change on our side. That TV camera-driven priorities will shift from Mumbai to some other place, which has the potential to keep TRPs high. The enemy will, of course, keep changing his targets and strategy. We will only wait for his next strike. The events unfolding in Delhi, however, have given some hope to the nation. After a long time, the concern and resolve shown on the issue of terrorism seem to be genuine though the fact of electoral compulsions is not lost on anyone. The war against terror will require a still more comprehensive plan. While the need for a federal agency is an admitted fact, we must understand that the role of the basic policing unit — the police station — is equally vital. The police station is arguably the most overburdened, understaffed, much-maligned but very important and crucial unit of the civil administration. Its job profile is so diverse and varied that it has an inherent capacity to acquire intelligence. All sections of society including unwanted elements interact with the police station and this is its main strength. While career intelligence officers have to slog hard to get information, the police station gets intelligence without much effort. It is no secret that while preparing their reports, intelligence officers depend heavily on the inputs supplied by the police stations. Presently our police stations and, in fact, the whole system of policing is too obsessed with bandobast and VIP duties. Intelligence collection has become a non-priority area, a kind of miscellaneous duty for long. Of late, the same is the case with regard to crime control as well. But the fact remains that no intelligence or operation agency with whatever resources and expertise can produce results without the support and backup of a strong network of police stations. Unfortunately, there has not been much of effort to equip police stations to deal with the challenges of the modern-day policing. Police stations all over the country have large-scale vacancies with a killing workload. There is an urgent need for huge investment at the police station level, both in terms of manpower and logistics. Emphasising on creating world class central agencies and neglecting police stations will be like creating IITs and IIMs with a failed primary education system. Moreover, state intelligence units have to play a major role in our fight against terror. The success story of Andhra Pradesh in containing left-wing extremists is often attributed to Grey Hounds, a commando unit. But the State Intelligence Branch plays an equally important role. In many other states, intelligence units have had no interface with terror. As a result, in times of crisis, they simply look lost. While creating or strengthening central intelligence agencies, a system of their linkage with state units has to be meticulously planned. A big weakness of the present system is the absence of these forward and backward linkages. This results in serious communication and information gaps and, at times, disasters. Another important issue is the jurisdiction over law and order. The Founding Fathers of our Constitution kept this important subject in the State List. One cannot blame them for not visualising a terror threat spanning not only across the country but the whole globe. In the changed security scenario, it is clear that the war against terror and organised crime cannot be fought and won at the state level. Which state police has the capacity to take on terror network and crime syndicates with roots in foreign lands? On each incident of terror attack, the Central government takes the plea that law and order is a State subject. State governments express their helplessness in view of the national and international reach of the terror modules. Both are right in their explanations. But who is wrong then? Why should the country suffer in this game of ping pong? It is time law and order was placed in the Concurrent List of the Constitution. This will give a scope for synergy in our national efforts against terror. The state governments may not agree so soon. Who would like to lose exclusive control over police, the visible arm of the state authority? But as things are moving, it is clear that the Union Government will have to play a more direct role in scheme of things. The proposed federal agency is a forward step in this direction. The need for specialised agencies for various police duties has been painfully validated in Mumbai. Neither the ill-equipped state police nor highly capable Army or Navy could do the job which the National Security Guards (NSG) finally performed. The NSG draws its personnel from the same armed forces and police organisations. But they are trained and equipped for this kind of situation. We should be thankful that at some point of time someone realised the need for a highly trained, motivated and specialised agency like the NSG. What would have been the scenario in Mumbai without the NSG is anybody’s guess. The Union Government’s decision to decentralise the deployment of the NSG is yet another welcome step. According to the Prime Minister’s announcement at an all-party meeting in New Delhi on November 30, four hubs of the NSG will be set up in various parts of the country. Already a debate had started about the precious time lost in the movement of the NSG from New Delhi to Mumbai. While creating the NSG hubs in metros and possibly in some more big cities subsequently, it has to be ensured that the quality of force is not diluted with increase in quantity. Still more meaningful would be to help the state governments in militarising a part of their police forces. In any case, who can guarantee that terror will strike in metros only? How can we forget carnages in Ahmedabad, Jaipur and as recent as the one in Guwahati? The need for quick reaction teams with all state police forces cannot be underestimated. There has to be someone to hold the ground till more specialised units like the NSG take over the operations in case of an emergency. Every crisis gives us some opportunity. We, as a nation, have lost many such chances in all these years. One can only hope that we will finally learn our lessons from the current chapter of terror war. This is the minimum we owe to the brave officers and men of various security agencies who walked into the war zone only to return home draped in the tricolor. The writer, an IPS officer, presently works with the anti-terror wing of the Orissa Police
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Cracking the cocoon Democracy
is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage. But clearly our Union Home Minister didn’t quite make the ringmaster. Monkeying around with security did finally take its toll and his head has rolled. “Who will cry when you die?” though is probably the question that must have struck Shivraj Patil as he handed in his resignation, which was accepted with embarrassing alacrity. The levels of anger and resentment in India’s public reached a crescendo in the aftermath of Mumbai. And it extends across a much broader wave-front than will be appeased by one or two rolling heads. It is now welling up against the entire mass of politicians. It is perhaps one of the most serious and powerful residues of the dastardly terrorist strike on Mumbai. This syndrome of deep anger is no longer hidden and it will have an explosive impact in the near future. The chances are that this will be dismissed rather lightly by sanguine politicians themselves who are its target. Some like Jaya Jaitly rubbish this as a knee-jerk reaction triggered by a hysterical media. When politicians complain that TV turns everything into a circus, it should be made clear that the circus was already there and that TV has merely demonstrated that not all the performers are well trained. But this is an angry public as never before. Dismissing this shrill attack on the entire political class as an attack on democracy is just one more aspect or effect of the cocooning syndrome that seems to inure the leaders from even the thought processes of the very people who have elected them. And nowhere is this syndrome more evident than in the concept of “VIP security”. This writer’s thesis is that snugly cosseted guardians of democracy develop a diminished ability to fathom the perils that ordinary people face routinely. Those inside the cocoon simply believe that everybody else must be safe too. As innocent people die in streetside markets, railway stations, hospitals and even hotels, they no longer feel secure. Their vulnerability generates hostility to the entire political class. It is not just about the huge waste of resources. It is about resources that are simply not available to common people for basic security needs. The escalating number of netas who expect, demand and then get entitled to large posse of security details is increasing day by day. Estimates vary but anecdotal evidence suggests that over 400 people are in the top category of security, if you include both politicians and ‘officials-with-entitlements’, requiring over 10,000 security personnel, excluding regular cops diverted for VIP security. In New Delhi alone, 14,200 policemen are deployed on round-the-clock VIP security duty. Add to this, variations on the theme for numerous Members of Parliament and numberless legislators at the state level and you are talking of tens of thousands of personnel and hundreds of crores of rupees of public money! This is a staggering figure and none of the publicly available estimates of its cost are reliable at the moment. But what you can rely on is people’s belief that this function of guarding the politicians is, unfortunately, where the vast majority of resources on internal security matters are being diverted. The signals are all there. The public is angry with the leaders who are playing games with them. The public is annoyed with leaders who are more protected than they are. The public detests the fact that it is they who die like cannon fodder, while leaders arrive mourning with sniffer dogs in attendance. This fatigue is widespread. Imagine the surprise on the face of Kerala Chief Minister Achutha-nandan when he received a public rebuff at the hands of the grieving relatives of a brave commando who died in the call of duty. It found its echo in the public slap on the face that Narendra Modi received from the wife of Mumbai’s slain Anti-Terror Squad ATS when he attempted to give her a large cash reward. Public anger may have been muted in the case of Raj Thackeray, doing the discourtesy of grieving for the man who had been the victim of his ire just a week ago. But Raj got millions of messages ridiculing his Marathi manoos roadside bullies, who were clearly cringing in the shadows when terror struck their homeland. Of course, the irony did not escape the millions of people watching this tamasha on television. The country seethed and many more people besides distressed diva Lata Mangeshkar copiously wept right through live broadcasts of the funeral processions. Just as India felt collectively shamed in the manner she was humiliated in full public gaze, the public in turn believed that this was due to the petty games that politicians have played all along, aided by officials whose hands were either tied by their masters, or who were incompetent and had been appointed to sensitive posts on account of their own political connections. It gets far worse. How could the then Chief Minister of Maharashtra even think of going to the site of the carnage with a massive police protection, TV crews and his actor son (bad and foolish enough!), who came with a favoured film producer in tow? This pathetic display of “disaster tourism” at its vulture-like worst has incensed even those who had previously expressed some restraint in the widespread attacks on politicians as a class. But it’s not just about security or its ugly display. It’s about the fact that the cocooning soon ensures that leaders are no longer in touch with real people or real issues. If their entire lives in so-called public service are led entirely within the sanitised and increasingly gilded bubbles that they occupy, then it is only natural that the public will resent precisely this aspect of their lives. This is what is happening today. Within the comfort of the quasi-secrecy that security barriers provide, too many of the so-called leaders are also disconnected completely in economic terms from the people they represent. This creates yet another level of disconnect with reality when it comes to taking crucial decisions. They don’t live the lives of those who elect them. Corruption has ensured that the gilded cage, secured by state-supplied security, is often lavish beyond belief. Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason. National crises of this kind are times when all the demon of diaper changing comes back to haunt them. And the cocoon threatens to
crack.
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Profile Emeritus Professor of History at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, 77-year-old Romila will share the award with Peter Robert Lamont Brown, 73-year-old Professor of History at Princeton University. She will receive $1-million Prize along with Brown at a ceremony on December 10. According to the Library of Congress, Romila and Brown brought “dramatically new perspective to understand vast sweeps of geographical territory and a millennium or more of time in, respectively, Europe and the Middle East, and in the Indian sub-continent”. Romila “created a new and more pluralistic view of Indian civilisation, which had seemed more unitary and unchanging, by scrutinising its evolution over two millennia and searching out its historical consciousness”. At the beginning of her career, Romila challenged the conventional historiography. In her History of India (1966), she broke from the prominently held view of an unchanging India, characterised by a past and static Golden Age. This work accelerated the adaptation of the social sciences in Indian universities and promptly became a teaching text in Indian schools. During the NDA rule — 1998 to 2004 — Romila vehemently opposed attempt to use history in support of an ideology of religious nationalism by the BJP. There was an attempt at the time to rewrite Indian textbooks. She took up cudgels against what she called the “Hindutva lobby” that insisted on changes in textbooks. The lobby, she pointed out, was trying to propagate a revisionist history in classrooms and political discourse. The RSS has a distinctly religious fundamentalist political agenda. There was virulent protest by some Indians living in the US when the Library of Congress appointed her as the first Kluge Chair in countries and cultures of the South in 2004. The Library rejected outright the demand from the Hindutva lobby to reverse her appointment. She was asked in an interview — were textbooks revised when the Congress-led UPA government replaced the BJP in Delhi? Her reply was: “When the Congress returned to power in 2004, it decided to do away with all the previous textbooks written by us as far back as 1960s and 70s as well as those produced by the BJP-led government just prior to its fall. A new set of books was commissioned, which are in use now. They are different from the ones we wrote and reflect some of the new interests in history as a discipline, and do not push the Hindutva hardline”. She then posed some significant questions and answered them herself. The worrying think is, what will happen if the BJP returns to power in the next general elections, due in three months time? Will they change textbooks again? Romila then came forward with the sound advise: “Once we accept one religious group’s agenda and beliefs to be taught in public schools, it opens the door for every other group to do the same thing. As educators, we have to make a distinction between history on the one hand, which involves questioning existing knowledge about the past where necessary, and faith on the other, where even myths are acceptable, the two have to be kept separate. The first is the domain of the historian and the second that of a priest”. Romila declined to accept the Padma Bhushan twice — in 2005 and 1992. In a letter to the then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, she said: “I only accept the awards from academic institutions or those associated with my professional work, and not state
awards”.
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On Record A mascot for Impact group’s “Save the Girl Child, Save Environment” initiative, Har-simrat now has at hand the challenge of reversing a trend that is only worsening by the day. She made the beginning this August by launching the “Nanhi Chhan” project from the Golden Temple in Amritsar. The project is unique in that it uses a sapling to link the girl child with mother earth and drive home her importance. The idea works simply: volunteers distribute saplings as prasad among devotees and urge them to care for their girl children as the earth would care for the saplings. By this time, over one lakh saplings have been disseminated, and as many messages of respect for the girl child. But Harsimrat Badal says she still has a long way to go. She speaks to The Sunday Tribune about her mission. Excerpts: Q: What prompted you to take up the “Nanhi Chhan” project at this time? A:
I have always been concerned about the declining sex ratio in Punjab, and would often think what I could do to stem the rot. Some day a beginning had to be made. So when Impact Group approached me to lead the “Nanhi Chhan” campaign, I agreed. We distribute “buta prasad” (saplings) to devotees and explain them the hidden symbolism. Like the earth nurtures the saplings, parents must nurture their girls lest there is a social crisis. This way the message reaches across easily. Q: Do you think such symbolism alone can help? A: I am aware of the extent of this problem. We are talking of a state, where some villagers still mourn the birth of a girl child. It is part of their custom. But that does not mean we can’t inspire a change of mindset. I see the Sikh religion as my most powerful weapon in the fight against female foeticide. Q:
What more are you doing to address the issue? Who are your partners in the
cause? A: We are roping in the heads of religions. We already have a stall at Golden Temple and a nursery at Talwandi Sabo from where we operate. In January, we will cover the Muslim-dominated Malerkotla, with help from the Imam of Ludhiana. Jalandhar’s Christian leaders and the head Imam of Ajmer Sharief dargah will help us with the cause. Q: Isn’t it paradoxical that while Sikhism denounces female foeticide, the Sikhs rampantly practice it? A: That’s true. In the 16th century, Guru Gobind Singh had issued a “hukamnama” against female feoticide. The guru had prohibited socialising with the girl child killers, saying: Bhadni tatha kanya maarne wale se koi mel ne rakhe. The “Sakhis” (scriptures) also tell us how Guru Harkishan had once returned a trader from his durbar, saying the latter had killed his girl child and hence devalued life. I am seeking the SGPC’s help to publicise these preachings. We will also raise the issue on December 24 when Punjab observes the martyrdom of sahibzadas at Fatehgarh Sahib, which has the lowest sex ratio. Q: Has the SGPC formally pledged support to the cause? A:
In its last executive meeting, the SGPC constituted a separate wing to address the issue of female feoticide. This new wing is on the lines of the SGPC’s Dharam Pracharak wing and will have a full-time convener. I now have local support to expand my reach in Punjab. Q: What about your political ambitions? You have campaigned for your husband in the past and now there’s speculation that you might contest the Bathinda Lok Sabha seat in his place? A:
As of now, politics is not on my wish list. My causes are my priorities. There is also no plan to contest the Bathinda Lok Sabha seat. But the exact position will become clear as we head closer to the general elections. I am first a daughter-in-law and a wife. I will abide by my family’s decision in this matter. Q: Any other plans? A: I want to create a corpus to fund the economically backward children and those who suffer physically disability. The Centre does not fund schools for the physically challenged beyond 12 years. Punjab has over 30,000 such children, whose future remains dark due to lack of funding to their schools. I will also raise the issue with the Union Minister for Child Development Renuka
Choudhury.
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THE only problem with the decision of establishing a federal agency against terror is that it has come a bit too late. India has been on the radar of various terrorist groups — foreign and indigenous — for about three decades. It looks so surprising and unfortunate that we have waited so long for a federal agency.
Historian
After