Stagnate or march with time
The news that the UK has abandoned apartheid in its recruitment policy for the Secret Services (MI6) has hit the headlines. The UK has just crossed the colour-blind limits of its core security services. It has also adopted an open-space policy to make recruitment to Secret Services more transparent. Opening up opportunities to naturalised citizens of non-white races is a healthy development in a society that is a multi-ethnic rattle-kettle, often sounding discordant notes.
Britain’s successor regimes in India continued the imperial system of recruitment to higher formations of its secret services from the loyal servants among the Indian Police and India Police Service. The Intelligence Bureau (IB) presently pursues the same system with religious zeal, though the Research and Analysis Wing had broken the police cordon.
The Intelligence Bureau had adopted a flimsy cover for recruitment to its lower grade services-organised in hierarchical system as characteristic of a police secret service. It used to advertise under cover of the Ministry of Home Affairs, train the selected officers in police academies and police stations before subjecting to specialised training in intelligence tradecrafts. They were born in the service as policemen and were made to blend characteristics of secret police service operatives much later in the career.
The strategy was later changed for this category of officers, when the IB started advertising in its own brand name. The training formulae continue to have the same package, with marginal modern inputs like basic computer education.
Two other important changes have taken place. Over a decade ago the IB had abandoned two deep-rooted prejudices: intake of Muslim officers, especially in the higher ranks and gender bias–recruiting women officers in the lower ranks. Breaking of the religious and gender barriers had started a healthy trend, though the intake quantum was very slow and still viewed with prejudice by the traditional police organisation. Very few Muslim officers have been inducted at the higher and lower formations. Besides a few women IPS officers there is only a sprinkle of the fair gender in the middle and lower ranks. The Intelligence Bureau technically continues to be a specialised police organisation of the Ministry of Home Affairs, just like the Border Security or Central Reserve Police Forces. No doubt, as they claim in the IB, it evolved out of the Thuggy Department.
On the other hand, the Research & Analysis Wing of the Cabinet Secretariat continue with queer policies in matters of recruitment to the higher and lower formations. Certain Class One officers of assorted Central Services, including a few IPS officers manage to find berth in the R&AW through the channel of relatives and associates. For direct recruitment to Class One R&AW services the agency falls back on the UPSC list of All India Services Examinations, that is left over after the intake quota to all other Central Services are completed. A select list is screened through procedural sieves and the filters of relatives and associates. Thus are born the R&AW Services officers corps. The external intelligence wing also has breached the gender bias but is yet to break the other taboo.
For the lower ranks no centralised recruitment is done. Individual aspirants can apply to the designated establishment officer or route their applications through the regional officers, if they happen to be fortunate to have an intimate relative and associate in the agency. Depending on the qualification and eligibility and position of the relative and associate a particular candidate is processed through the procedural sieve and selected for training.
In comparative scale, recruitment policy of the Intelligence Bureau is more transparent than that of the R&AW. However, the R&AW has abandoned the police gene and is in the evolving process of acquiring a compact service tradition, character and professional individuality. It is still hanging between the gravitational fields of the Intelligence Bureau and Indian Foreign Service. The R&AW can acquire MI6 like image only if it can assert its own service tradition through efficient performance. At thirty-seven the R&AW is an errant adolescent. The IB is over a hundred year old young agency. Both require peeping out of politician’s pallu and align them with the people and the constitution.
A few words should be added to the recruitment policy of the IB and R&AW. A time has come to examine if the IB should be purged of the police gene and newer chromosomes should be added to its higher formations by lateral induction from specialised services-both general and scientific. There is urgent need for reviewing the contorted multi-cadre structure of the lower services and bringing homogeneity and rational structuring. Moreover, there is need for widening the streams of training and studies and activities in the IB and R&AW as both internal and external security challenges are changing at faster rates than the bureaucracy can perceive. This will require comprehensive restructuring of the training system and the spectrum of accountability and transparency.
