DC Pathak
(The writer is a former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. Views are personal)
‘Accountability is necessary to run a corruption-free system that is primarily dependent on right decisions, and transparency helps the scrutiny of the decision-making process’
A democratic order is the best form of governance because it promotes transparency that makes it possible to fix accountability. Accountability is necessary to run a corruption-free system that is primarily dependent on right decisions, and transparency helps the scrutiny of the decision-making process.
Execution of a decision can be marred by inefficiency, neglect or corruption, and here also, transparency of the processes, including adherence to timelines and rules, could prove to be of great importance. Further, performance at any level involved effective supervision – the role of supervisors often goes unscrutinised – and transparency was required to make it possible to examine this aspect of the organisational functioning too. Anti-corruption bodies themselves fail to produce deterrence if their performance is not subjected to scrutiny from outside.
An independent high-powered watch body outside of the political executive was necessitated because of the growing perception that there was a political-bureaucratic nexus, as brought out by the Vohra Committee report way back in 1993. The reports of the numerous Administrative Reforms Commissions (ARCs) on delegation of decision-making, restricting the number of levels through which a file would pass for reaching the final decision and creation of interdisciplinary teams to address cross-cutting issues in a transparent way, had not been implemented. It goes to the credit of the Modi regime that inter-ministerial coordination had vastly improved and preceded the placing of any matter before the cabinet according to a timeline.
There is an inherent contradiction between confidentiality and transparency, and the former has to be practised within rules that give it legitimacy. The RTI Act 2005 deals with this matter and strikes a balance between transparency and confidentiality – for the sake of the nation, the society and the individual. There is a provision in the Act saying that notwithstanding anything in the Official Secrets Act or any of the exemptions permissible in the RTI Act, a public authority may allow access to information if ‘public interest in disclosure outweighs the harm to the protected interests’.
The 1967 exemptions from disclosures granted by OSA stand in the RTI Act as well since they relate to matters pertaining to the ‘sovereignty and integrity of India’, the security of the State or friendly relations with other countries. Maintenance of secrecy of information requires ‘security classification’, which in turn defines the ‘restrictive security’ or the ‘need to know’ parameters for accessing it. It may be mentioned that a job that called for handling of secret information required a certain amount of mental strength, and it did not belong to people who were credulous, who lacked self-discipline or who did not have the ability to distinguish between an authoritative opinion and gossip. All of this highlights the strategic significance of transparency in the context of the governance of a democratic state.
This is the era of proxy wars, and one way of damaging a target country without recourse to ‘open’ warfare is to attack its economic strength and assets. Warren Christopher, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, famously said in 1993 that ‘National security was inseparable from economic security.’ Pak ISI chose Mumbai for the 26/11 attack, for it is the economic capital of India. It follows, therefore, that any enterprise that gave economic strength to the country must have a setup of professionally trained people to safeguard its security and handle what is termed as ‘insider threat management’.
The latter is what brings together the functions of vigilance and security because a corrupt employee can fall for the enemy’s designs more easily. Both these functions are now to be integrated with the mainline management because the source of ‘insider threat’ may be hibernating in any part of the enterprise, making it incumbent on Vigilance and Security to have a thorough knowledge of how the organization was run and how its operations were conducted. This validates the principle that security and vigilance must derive their authority from the person at the top. These functions depend for their success on the ability and outreach of the handlers, who were required to convince the senior supervisors of the mainstream that the latter had to act as the ‘eyes and ears’ for the former in various segments of the enterprise.
The work of Vigilance and Security begins with a lookout for members who seem to be ‘vulnerable’ to the adversary’s influence. Vulnerability is universally ascribed to ‘notable addiction’, ‘greed’ and ‘disgruntlement’. Security and vigilance staff trained in intelligence tradecraft, like surveillance and secret enquiries, can check out on such individuals and also counsel them against their ‘weakness’ in suitable cases.
The increasing importance of these functions is reflected in the new areas where the security executives may be asked to extend their helping hand. Background checks and re-verification of antecedents of those who handled ‘sensitive’ work and even ‘due diligence’ tasks may come to them. They may be required to help in the interviews for recruitment, the formulation of the organisation’s dos and don’ts and the building up of the information security system of the enterprise.
They would give special attention to this last-mentioned work in view of the fact that a subverted insider was likely to make an unauthorised communication with an entity outside. Above all, vigilance and security setup should perform the role of a mentor by organising formal or informal programmes to promote the organizational culture of ethics, loyalty and honesty of purpose that should drive the execution of tasks assigned to members of the organization.
Transparency in governance has emerged as a new challenge facing the people because of the tendency of the political rulers to hide their shortcomings and their reluctance to punish corrupt insiders on one hand and the social media campaign of the opposition to pull down the regime through an ‘influence war’ on the other.
The universal adult franchise of India is an ideal for democracy, but the prevalence of caste, creed and regional divides in the backdrop of poverty and limited education encouraged recourse to undemocratic means by all parties for winning an election. The Indian electorate has proved its democratic credentials and retained its trust in nationalism and peace even in a situation of personal economic problems facing them.
India has to especially rely on its youth and its women power for judging the rulers on merit. The foreign and domestic policies of the Modi government, based on mutually beneficial bilateral relations without India getting aligned with any world power, the promotion of infrastructure for the benefit of all Indians, and the encouragement of digital connectivity for the economic empowerment of youth, are the hallmarks of this regime, and they have served the democratic state well. A conscientious judiciary, strong social media and a constructive opposition are symbols of a transparent and viable democracy, and citizens of India can derive satisfaction from the fact that they were all in place in India. (IANS)