Mirror, mirror on the wall

There are spies, and books about spies and books written by spies. I know nothing of spies. But I do know that of the remaining two the last can be very boring because, obviously, they can’t match the books that are about spies. 

One reason for this, of course, is that while fiction writers have a free hand, writers who have served intelligence agencies don’t. But another, perhaps equally important reason is the need of former officials — spies and the rest — to tell the world how good they were and how bad things have become since they retired. 

You only have to have to dine at the Delhi Gymkhana or the India International Centre for that. Far better that they all write books instead of ruining the buzz that a good, reasonably priced scotch gives.

Over the last 15 or so years I have read around 20 such books. In the last 10 years, Indians have also joined the group. 

Sankaran Nair, B Raman, A S Dulat, Vikram Sood, Tilak Deveshar (on Pakistan), V K Singh, R K Yadav of Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and M K Dar and T V Rajeshwar of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) are some of them.

 

I have also read the efforts by my fellow journalists — looking for some headline stuff in these books — to squeeze water out of stone. It is almost never there and has nearly had to be invented.

Nair’s, Raman’s and Rajeshwar’s books are barren in every possible way you can imagine. Such a high degree of self-censorship — even adjectives are not used much — is self-defeating. Such books serve no great purpose, not even of glorifying the writers.

The rest mentioned above are somewhat better. Even if they don’t tell-all, they are at least a bit more reflective. The overall impression created is “we are good mostly, very good often and outstanding occasionally. But the army is lackadaisical, the politicians stupid or worse, and the civil servants, well, the less said about them the better.”

I would rank Tilak Deveshar first, Vikram Sood second and Amarjit Dulat third. Indeed, Mr Dulat’s book is not a book at all but an extended conversation with his Pakistani counterpart, Asad Durrani. But it is highly readable, if dated in its political orientation. 

Naturally, this is opposite of the view held by the army, politicians and the civil servants who see both RAW and IB as bumblers, if not worse. The truth, as is its wont, lies somewhere in the middle.

As these books show, everyone gets its right sometimes and everyone goofs sometimes, occasionally very badly. Once in a while the goof-up is monumental. In 1977 the IB got the election wrong and on 26/11,  RAW failed the country.

But then you have to feel sorry for these guys. As is generally conceded everywhere in the world, information gathering agencies are known only for their failures, not their successes. 

One spectacular failure wipes out the 99 smaller successes. 9/11, 7/7/, 26/11 all stand testimony to this. 

However, that’s the price these agencies pay for not being accountable in the way others are. This is especially so when they fail to tell the difference between serving the country and serving the regime currently in place. 

The IB, in particular, has a bigger problem here. Its tendency to blur the lines between country and government is a serious problem. 

Being used by the political masters to gain an upper hand over their rivals may be the oldest game in the world, practised in all countries, even the two totems of civil liberties, the US and the UK. What is good for the government, however, isn’t good for the citizens, which is why they don’t love their spies. Fear, yes; but love? But none of the writers of these books admits that there is a problem here.

Often we wonder why India’s intelligence-gathering agencies are so inefficient, when actually they really aren’t all that bad. Most of these books provides some pointers. 

Much of their grievance has to do with inadequate resources of various kinds and inadequate political will to allow them a free hand. But the main problem, perceived or real, could well be their own incompetence.

This aspect gets no airing at all. All these writers seem to believe, even if in reality they don’t, the Bollywood depiction of their two services.