From Kashmir to the stockmarkets

BACKSTAGE/IB Director K.P. Singh

is the man (IPS, Chhattisgarh cadre, 1966 batch) who succeeded Shyamal Dutta in 2001 and another brilliant sleuth, Ajit Doval, had to make way for Singh.

People also know the IB's role in investigating the bear cartel that hammered the market down prior to the disinvestment of public sector undertakings (PSUs), its advice on whether the Indian cricket team should go to Pakistan, and the era of peace and friendship between the various arms of the intelligence services that Singh's appointment as director of IB (DIB) brought about.

But what people don't know about Singh is his deep knowledge and fondness for Kashmiri culture, especially food "" having lived in Kashmir for decades, where he was involved in intelligence work.

Kashmiri food, he once explained, has a range of tastes and flavours, but for some reason, does not have the concept of a dessert. It was his suggestion that the state banquets (Wazwan) end, not with kehwa , the Kashmiri green tea, but with a sweet, like ice cream.

This was only one of his contributions in knitting Kashmir into the consciousness of India. The others, he prefers not to talk about.

Singh has been in the IB for more than a quarter-century. There is nothing he doesn't know about patterns of infiltration and exfiltration from Kashmir, the actors in the drama, the politics and the facade of politics that is sometimes played out in the state, and what Kashmiris really want.

It was this knowledge that was used to great effect when Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani went to the US in 2003 with K P Singh in his team and had a discussion with US Attorney General John Ashcroft.

It may be recalled that when Pervez Musharraf met President Bush at Camp David, one of the issues the US president took up with Musharraf was patterns of cross-border terrorism on the basis of information collected by the IB.

With major financial scams like the stamp paper scam and the manipulation of the share markets, the IB was drawn into kinds of investigation it had never done before.

Somewhat unfairly, in the view of the intelligence community, Finance Minister Jaswant Singh lit into India's intelligence gathering network at a conference last year blaming it for the Kargil war because of "failure of management of information, its conversion into actionable intelligence".

The DIB, it appears, was determined to prove the finance minister wrong. In its investigations into the activities of a bear cartel when the government was trying to divest PSU shares last month, it found evidence of at least two corporate houses and a broking firm trying to drive the market down.

When the Disinvestment Minister Arun Shourie called a meeting with officials from the finance ministry and Securities and Exchange Board of India, an unexpected presence was that of K P Singh's. Singh presumably briefed the government on his findings, on the basis of which Shourie had the corporate houses pulled up.

This was noted by the Congress and reacting on it, the party's economic cell co-chairman, Arjun Sengupta, saw in the presence of the IB chief, new evidence of government interference in a market it had failed to gauge before disinvesting. All because K P Singh was present at the meeting.

If India's greatest intelligence failure was the ignominious return of the Indian peace keeping forces from Sri Lanka, who came back without the intelligence wherewithal to do their job, it happened because the agencies were riven with internecine warfare.

Today, things are different, Jaswant Singh's comments about Kargil notwithstanding. In Kashmir, there is closer coordination between military intelligence, civilian intelligence and police work on the ground.

Singh's counterparts in other intelligence services say it is largely because of Singh's relaxed attitude and respect for the professionalism of colleagues that turf wars have been kept at bay. The challenge, of course, is to keep vigil despite the feel-good spirit in India and Pakistan relations.

As Singh retires later this year, the hunt has begun for his successor. Shyamal Dutta became a governor after retiring from the IB. Perhaps Singh, too, will get a government appointment "" and this time, one where he won't be required to use an alias.