Watch me @ CNN-IBN: Time for India to start talks with Pakistan?

I was on CNN-IBN's 'Face the Nation' with Sagarika Ghose discussing whether India should start talks with Pakistan. Co-panelists were Ambassador K.C. Singh (pro-dialogue) and Chandan Mitra of the BJP, who was opposed.

You can watch the 20 minute video in four-parts starting here.

Talk to Pakistan, says 26/11 inquiry committee member

Sustained dialogue with Pakistan is the only way to isolate and marginalise the jihadi elements says a former Special Secretary, R&AW ...





27 January 2010
The Hindu

Talk to Pakistan, says 26/11 inquiry committee member

Siddharth Varadarajan

A former intelligence official and member of the two-man R.D. Pradhan committee which probed the police response to the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai has said the resumption of dialogue with Pakistan will help marginalise the terrorists responsible for the incident and is the only way to contribute to peace in the region.

In a statement to a Track-II India-Pakistan meeting convened in Delhi last week by the Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation, V. Balachandran, formerly a special secretary in the Research & Analysis Wing, said, India must be mature rather than “prickly” in its diplomacy. Reiterating an assessment he made in 2004 that the “security-oriented containment strategy” of Pakistan had failed to deter terrorist incidents, Mr. Balachandran said that 26/11 had not changed the situation.

The answer, he said, lay in New Delhi pushing for the creation of a “peace constituency” by encouraging trade and people-to-people contact, especially of journalists, sportspersons, artists, writers, lawyers, human rights activists, film stars and traders. India should also avoid over-reacting to insignificant pronouncements from across the border and “rein in rabid politicians and ‘security specialist’ hawks” whose statements tend to challenge the integrity of Pakistan.

“Any Indian unilateral measure against Pakistan will only hurt a segment of peace-loving Pakistani population, which is not desirable for long-lasting peace. It will also hurt India… Only a sustained India-Pakistan dialogue will contribute to South Asian peace. It will also help in marginalising jihadi and fundamentalist elements who are supporting each other in both countries and elsewhere.”

Mr. Balachandran said it was quite clear the Mumbai attacks were planned by the Lashkar-e-Taiba leadership in Pakistan. “The Indian public is, however, quite convinced that the ordinary citizens and intelligentsia in Pakistan are not involved in this. It is only a small misguided group, perhaps with official or semi-official patronage that is waging this terrorist war against India.”

While Islamabad must do more to put down terrorist activities against India, Delhi’s policy must be based on the fact that Pakistan’s “power brokers”, like the army, do not stand to gain by peace, he said. “It is the majority middle class, intelligentsia and divided families who suffer the maximum by strained relations… We need to cultivate this segment by unilateral concessions if necessary by way of visas, facilities for medical and technical education, cultural, sports and film delegations etc.” He added that the “paranoia of our security services that this would facilitate infiltration of subversives needs to be ridiculed as they are already cross over in droves”.

Asessing the NSA II: It’s strategic culture that counts

Revamping the National Security Council structure to remedy the lack of long-term planning must be a top priority for the new NSA...


22 January 2010
The Hindu

ASSESSING THE NSA - II
It’s strategic culture that counts

Siddharth Varadarajan

On October 16, 2002, the National Security Advisory Board — whose members had never officially been consulted on any major decision — was called to Hyderabad House for a highly unusual meeting with the National Security Council chaired by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. On the agenda was the question of what to do with Operation Parakaram — the deployment of the Indian Army at the Pakistan border — which was then in its 10th month.

“It was clear from the presentations made,” one of the NSAB members present told The Hindu recently, “that the government was keen to call off the operation and was looking for a rubber stamp.” Unfortunately, board members, mostly retired officials with a sprinkling of outside experts, came out against the redeployment of troops. As the meeting progressed, however, one of them got a text message. TV channels were reporting breaking news: ‘Government calls off Parakram on recommendation of NSAB’.

As loyal team players, board members went along with the charade. But this episode underlines a fundamental problem with the wider National Security Council architecture: structures like the NSAB and the NSC Secretariat (NSCS) have been created but their role and function, 11 years on, remain undefined and vague. Not surprisingly, the systemic weakness they were meant to deal with - the absence of long-term, strategic planning and analysis - remains unaddressed.

As the only part of the NSC apparatus directly empowered by the Prime Minister to act on his behalf, the National Security Adviser has been able to act effectively on the diplomatic and strategic front by making existing official machinery function in a more coordinated fashion. On the long-term planning front, however, the NSA has been hampered by the absence of a proper support structure and requisite talent. The NSCS was created by folding the Joint Intelligence Committee into it as its core and then pulling in additional staff. But opinions are mixed about the extent to which it has been able to function as the executive “office of the NSA” in its interaction with different branches of government. And the fact that the JIC has been revived as a separate part of the NSCS suggests intelligence assessment and tasking is still very much a work in progress.

Satish Chandra, who served as Deputy to the NSA from 1999 to 2005 blames M.K. Narayanan for the problem. “The NSCS was a coordinator of intelligence and trends which individual ministries could not take up. It was conceived as a think-tank anticipating threats,” he said in an interview. “Intelligence coordination was also key. We created the Intelligence Coordination Group, bringing the producers and consumers of intelligence together so that the agencies knew what to collect. We came up with detailed annual tasking, with annual assessment. Unfortunately, Narayanan did not use this.”

Serving NSCS staffers strongly dispute this assessment, noting that the ICG concept continues, albeit under a different name. And the fact remains that prior to Mr. Narayanan's tenure, the NSCS, for all its “coordination,” produced some great bloomers, one of which was a report recommending that India send troops to Iraq.

As far as the handling of intelligence was concerned, Mr. Narayanan made two changes. As NSA till 2004, Brajesh Mishra took little interest in intelligence matters and was quite happy to let the Director, Intelligence Bureau (DIB) and Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) chief meet the Prime Minister directly (though he would invariably be present in those meetings).

As an ex-DIB, however, Mr. Narayanan saw himself as integral to the process of intelligence fusion, much of which was tactical. He held regular meetings with the intelligence chiefs and did not encourage them to meet Manmohan Singh directly. C.D. Sahay, who served as head of RAW from 2003-2005, recalled the almost continuous direct access he and the DIB had with Mr. Vajpayee. “My understanding is that with Mr. Narayanan, the intelligence chiefs lost that direct access to the PM. If they needed to convey something important, they got to do it only to the NSA”.

By assuming responsibility for intelligence fusion at the tactical level, Mr. Narayanan exposed himself to attack. The terrorist strike on Parliament in 2001 did not see the Opposition demanding Mr. Mishra's head. But, said Mr. Sahay, Mr. Narayanan came under sustained fire for failing to prevent the November 2008 Mumbai incident.

The second change Mr. Narayanan introduced in intelligence management was to revive the JIC under a standalone chairman, essentially separating it from the NSCS. The move puzzled a number of former intelligence chiefs, who spoke to The Hindu on background, since it was not in line with the Group of Ministers report on intelligence reform. However, according to a former NSCS staffer, Rahul Roy-Chaudhury, now Senior Fellow for South Asia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, this separation was “absolutely the right decision”. He said it was quite impractical for the NSCS staff to do both the tasks of long-term strategic policy and planning as well as intelligence coordination and assessment. “These tasks are fundamentally different and require quite different expertise. While the former requires a fundamental understanding of key medium and long-term global strategic trends along with access to largely non-classified material, the latter requires short-term tactical perspectives based, to a large extent, on classified information provided by the intelligence collection agencies”. If anything, said Mr. Roy-Chaudhury, a separate but related group, possibly within the JIC, is also needed to perform strategic tasking functions. “It is difficult to ensure objectivity in tasking from those involved in tactical assessment functions”.

The only problem with Mr. Narayanan's decision was that it was not accompanied by a commensurate increase in the total staff strength for the NSCS and JIC. Most strategic planning is done by ex-IB officials, who prevent talent from coming in or ensure whatever talent emerges is not retained. The NSA tried to increase the numbers but tough security requirements, exacerbated by the Rabindar Singh scandal in RAW and the cyber-security scandal in the NSCS, meant staff strength in both organisations remained in short supply.

The Indian Foreign Service, which might otherwise have been an ideal reservoir for the NSCS, is itself short-staffed and has been able to send only one officer, China expert Sujan Chinoy, on deputation to the Secretariat in addition to the current DNSA, Alok Prasad. As for Indian academia, another potential catchment area, the NSC has done little to encourage foreign language and area studies.

With the exception of the draft nuclear doctrine, produced in 1999 during K. Subrahmanyam's chairmanship and adopted by the government in 2003, NSAB reports appear to have had little impact on government policy. Some NSAB members said this is because they only have access to open-source material despite taking the oath of official secrecy. Others familiar with the NSC system dispute this assessment. “The problem with the research produced by the NSAB or NSCS is not lack of access to classified material but actual lack of expertise on the full range of issues that concern national security”, an official told The Hindu.

At a more practical level, the lack of continuous connectivity between the NSA and the NSCS hampers the effectiveness of both. With the Secretariat officially tasked to serve the NSC, which rarely meets, the NSA is left to perform his diplomatic and nuclear functions with just one joint secretary and two director-level officers in the PMO. The NSCS has a staff but has never really functioned as the “Office of the NSA.” Under Mr. Mishra, the late J.N. Dixit and Mr. Narayanan, the National Security Adviser's work has gradually expanded in line with the complexity of India's interaction with the rest of the world. Even if the work of counter-terrorism intelligence is handled by the Ministry of Home Affairs and the proposed National Counter-Terrorism Centre, there is much more to intelligence than that. There is some thought being given to appointing a standalone 'intelligence czar' to deal with fusion and tasking. Even if that portfolio is taken away from Shiv Shankar Menon, named on Wednesday as the next NSA, the three core functions of diplomacy, nuclear command and control, and long-term security planning and assessment will need a tighter relationship between the NSA and the NSCS, with the Deputy NSA being tasked to a much greater extent on key diplomatic and security issues.

The only caveat, of course, is that the problem of long-term assessment will not be resolved through bureaucratic adjustment. Because the NSC has never delivered on that part of its mandate, some observers believe a fresh look is needed at the very concept. “I will go further and question the existence of the National Security Council,” Brajesh Mishra, NSA from 1999 to 2004, said in an interview. “I don't think we need it because the Cabinet Committee on Security really does everything. And consequent to abolishing the NSC, the NSCS should be trimmed to give the NSA advice on his duties relating to international affairs. The JIC could then be made to report to the Prime Minister through the Cabinet Secretariat.”

The problem with Mr. Mishra's suggestion, of course, is that the CCS deliberates on current policy and not on matters of long-term planning. And the latter area is where urgent action is needed as the country's global clout increases. India's problems here are systemic and chronic: it is simply not prepared in terms of talent and systems for medium and long term planning. Indian universities do not produce talent in the quantity and quality required and there is no part of the bureaucratic system which encourages the nurturing of talent.

Given this deficiency, the NSA tends to be burdened with everyday demands and little time is devoted to effecting systemic structural improvements in how decisions get taken when multiple government agencies are involved. If India wants to be in a position to exercise power internationally, it requires both diplomatic instruments and internal structures. The Copenhagen climate change summit is a good example of how the lack of a proper internal system of policy articulation can lead to an unsatisfactory diplomatic outcome. Mr. Narayanan showed great skill in pulling together different parts of the system during the Indo-U.S. nuclear negotiations. But the effort was ad hoc, leaving no permanent structural imprint or institutional memory.

Ensuring the NSCS is restructured to serve both as the ‘Office of the NSA’ and as the catalyst for system-wide talent generation and strategic planning will be the biggest challenge the new NSA will have to deal with.

The NSA: More effective externally than internally

With the record of 11 years and three incumbents before us, a review of the National Security Adviser’s role as an institution is needed to see what improvements are possible...



20 January 2010
The Hindu

ASSESSING THE NSA - I
More effective externally than internally

Siddharth Varadarajan

India is unique in combining a parliamentary system with the institution of a National Security Adviser who has wide-ranging executive responsibilities in the areas of foreign policy, intelligence, nuclear command and control as well as long-term strategic planning.

Created in 1998 following a series of high-level committees that studied the management of national security and intelligence, the NSA was intended to be the prime mover of a multi-tiered planning structure with the National Security Council (NSC) headed by the Prime Minister at the apex. An NSC Secretariat (NSCS) was created to service the Council, which subsumed the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) and its staff within it. Finally, a National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) of outside experts was set up to generate independent inputs to the NSC.

A decade later, it is logical that the functioning of these structures be reviewed to see how effective the system has been.

In a series of on-the-record and background interviews with key participants in the NSC system over the past decade — including Brajesh Mishra, who was NSA from 1998 to 2004, and half-a-dozen former chiefs of India’s internal and external intelligence agencies — the picture that emerges is one of a system that has delivered mixed results and is in need of refinement, enhanced staffing and a clearer delineation of tasks.

If the institution of the NSA proved to be an unqualified success in dealing with complex foreign policy issues with national security implications such as the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal, the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008 highlighted the absence of focussed intelligence coordination. As for long-term national security assessment and planning — the original raison d’etre of the NSCS — most of the former officials interviewed by The Hindu believe this is the weakest link in the system, a view disputed by those who are currently on the inside.

As matters stand, the NSA today formally wears three broad hats. First, as coordinator of complex foreign policy initiatives and interlocutor with the big powers on strategic matters, he is diplomatic adviser to the Prime Minister. Second, as head of the NSCS, he is a long-term planner, anticipating new threats and challenges to national security. Third, as chair of the Executive Council of the Nuclear Command Authority, he is the overseer of India’s nuclear weapons programme and doctrine. Due to the legacy of weak leadership in the Ministry of Home Affairs during Shivraj Patil’s years, the NSA’s job under M.K. Narayanan slowly expanded to take on a fourth role — internal security issues like Kashmir, the North-East and Naxalism. Intelligence coordination and tasking, particularly in counter-terrorism, also became part of his turf, mainly because of his own background.

This was not how things were meant to be. The NSA, whether in presidential systems like the U.S. or Russia or parliamentary systems like Britain, where he is a diplomatic adviser, only deals with international issues, said Mr. Mishra.

While the main turf battle his predecessors waged was with the External Affairs Minister, Mr. Narayanan’s role as the country’s de facto internal security czar opened a second potential front of conflict. Intelligence chiefs reported to him, and his office became the clearing house for the collation, processing and tasking of intelligence. As long as the power vacuum created by a weak Ministry of Home Affairs remained, this front would remain dormant. But when P. Chidambaram moved into the Home Ministry in the wake of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, things changed. Soon after that, Mr. Narayanan found himself joining the intelligence chiefs in a daily meeting chaired by the Home Minister in North Block. But he remained in charge of other bits of the intelligence set-up.

As was to be expected of an institution that was not only new but also alien to the existing patterns of bureaucracy, the NSC structure has evolved in a way that closely mirrors the priorities and focus of the NSA. Under Brajesh Mishra, who held the post from 1998 to 2004 concurrent with his job as Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the NSCS was run by the Deputy to the NSA (DNSA), Satish Chandra, at the time a serving Secretary-level Foreign Service officer. Intelligence tasking was carried out by the Intelligence Coordination Group (ICG), which brought the consumers of intelligence products together with the producers under the chairmanship of the NSA, and the NSCS staff conducted research and produced papers on the long-term challenges to India’s security. “The NSCS had anticipated many of the threats we see now,” said Mr. Chandra in an interview. “For example, awareness about pandemics and their implications was discussed by us in 2000-2002 and pushed into the system”. As for the NSA himself, Mr. Mishra devoted most of his energy to foreign policy and did not involve himself too closely in intelligence matters

Though Mr. Mishra was considered effective and influential, he was not without his critics at the time. K. Subrahmanyam, doyen of India’s strategic thinkers and in many ways the prime mover of the NSA/NSC concept within the country, repeatedly argued in favour of a full-time NSA unencumbered by the task of running the PMO. But in an interview to The Hindu, Mr. Subrahmanyam now acknowledges that Mr. Mishra’s political proximity to Prime Minister Vajpayee was an effective diplomatic instrument that allowed India to emerge as a global player. “By combining the jobs of Principal Secretary and NSA, Brajesh was able to interact with the big powers and very effectively projected India’s image as a major power,” he said. “Even though I was a critic, I don’t think he would have been able to play that role without combining the two jobs.”

When the United Progressive Alliance government headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came to power in 2004, J.N. Dixit, another former diplomat, was appointed NSA. At the same time, a new post of Special Advisor for Internal Security was created and Mr. Narayanan, a former Director of the IB, named to the job. Contrary to public impression, however, the new post was not intended to dilute the NSA’s mandate in any way. “An order was issued in June 2004 that the NSA will be responsible for intelligence and coordination and that the Internal Security Advisor ‘may also be marked’ on intelligence matters,” C.D. Sahay, who was head of RAW at the time, said in an interview. Other officials familiar with internal deliberations within the PMO said Mr. Narayanan was, in fact, Dr. Singh’s first choice for NSA but was unable to accept the position because of an illness. Upon Mr. Dixit’s sudden demise in January 2005, however, the job landed on to his plate after the Prime Minister first considered naming either Ronen Sen or S.K. Lambah, both former diplomats, to the job.

As NSA, Mr. Narayanan’s biggest achievement was managing the inter-agency process that fed into the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal. In January 2005, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, then the French President’s Diplomatic Adviser, arrived in New Delhi with a non-paper spelling out a broad proposal on behalf of the U.S., France and Britain for the resumption of nuclear commerce with India. The July 2005 Indo-U.S. agreement grew out of that visit, with both Mr. Narayanan and the MEA playing key roles in framing the nature of the bargain. Negotiations with the U.S. over the separation of civil and military nuclear facilities, the nature of safeguards and fuel assurances, reprocessing and other issues were difficult and often saw the MEA, the Indian Embassy in Washington and the Department of Atomic Energy at logger-heads with each other. As head of the ‘apex group’ overseeing the negotiations, the NSA had to reconcile these positions. Later, he had to directly step in at the highest levels to get the U.S. to stick to its commitments.

Speaking of American NSAs, on whom the Indian equivalent was modelled, Ivo Daalder and I.M. Destler wrote: “They must provide confidential advice to the President yet establish a reputation as an honest broker between the conflicting officials and interests across the government.” The nuclear deal was, in many ways, tailor-made for the Indian NSA’s office because at an institutional level there was nobody else who could play that kind of co-ordinating role. The Prime Minister was committed to the nuclear deal but his officials were divided on its details. Forging a common position, mostly, as it turned out, on the basis of the DAE’s arguments, was Mr. Narayanan’s big contribution.

Mr. Narayanan also emerged as a key player in India’s renewed engagement with other big powers, especially Russia, France, China and Japan. Most of this never made the headlines. The NSA’s is by definition a plodding job in which he has to put lots of small things together, especially in order to cover for the inadequacies of the Indian bureaucratic system. Even the diplomatic adviser part is not just about having bright ideas but about installing the machinery to make things happen. And his importance internationally stems from the authority he carries as the Prime Minister’s representative.

When it came to Pakistan, however, the NSA’s multiple roles came into conflict with each other, especially in recent months. As diplomatic adviser, Mr. Narayanan should have found ways of pressing ahead with the kind of engagement the Prime Minister repeatedly said he favoured. But as an internal security czar who had fought off calls for his resignation after 26/11, he knew another terrorist strike would cost him his job — especially if he was seen as backing the idea of dialogue with Islamabad. Slowly but surely, the adviser had fallen out of step with the agenda of his principal.

Slimmer portfolio awaits new NSA

Shiv Shankar Menon the front-runner, Left not keen on M.K. Narayanan as West Bengal Governor...

16 January 2010
The Hindu

Slimmer portfolio awaits new NSA

Siddharth Varadarajan

New Delhi: Although the decision to shift National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan out of the Prime Minister’s Office and into a vacant Raj Bhavan has been taken, the government has yet to decide on his successor or the State to which he will go as governor.

One thing, however, is certain: the role and office of the NSA, which is still very much a work in progress as far as the wider architecture of governance is concerned, is likely to focus more exclusively on the problems of diplomatic engagement rather than internal security management.

This shift in emphasis, which began when P. Chidambaram took charge of the Home Ministry in 2008, will both influence — and be influenced by — the choice of the next NSA.

According to informed sources, the former Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon is the clear front-runner. Other potential contenders are either otherwise engaged — Special Envoy Shyam Saran is too valued by the Prime Minister for his work as climate change envoy — or, like the former Indian ambassador to the U.S., Ronen Sen, slated to make the gubernatorial cut.

With Manmohan Singh travelling to Kolkata on Saturday, the capital was awash with rumours of the Prime Minister seeking West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya’s concurrence for sending the NSA as governor to his State. However, a senior leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) told The Hindu on Friday that the party would oppose Mr. Narayanan’s name for Bengal. “He is well-known as a hatchet man for the Congress,” the leader said. “If they want to send him somewhere else, they are welcome. We will not agree to him coming to Bengal.”

Other names in the ring for governorships are the former Union Home Minister, Shivraj Patil, senior Congress leader Mohsina Kidwai, whose Rajya Sabha term ends in June, Urmilaben Patel, wife of the former Gujarat Chief Minister, Chimanbhai Patel, Krishna Sahi, the former Union Minister in the Narasimha Rao government from Bihar and Santosh Mohan Deb, the former Union Minister from Assam.

The Congress core committee, including the Prime Minister, party president Sonia Gandhi, Mr. Chidambaram and party leader Ahmed Patel, met on Friday evening to finalise a decision.

Besides West Bengal, the Centre will appoint governors to Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.

Conduct worthy of a police state

The peremptory deportation of a Nepali student from India and the unlawful detention of a tribal woman shot by the police in Chhattisgarh raise troubling questions about the power of our ‘national security’ apparatus...






9 January 2010
The Hindu

Conduct worthy of a police state

Siddharth Varadarajan

The Indian Constitution and various laws framed under it grant the Indian state and its agencies enormous power to regulate the movement of persons, especially when the bogey of national security is raised. These powers include the preventive detention of citizens under one pretext or the other and, under the Foreigners Act, the summary deportation of foreign nationals, including those that have legally entered the country and have not violated the laws of the land in any way. Indian nationals who are unable to prove their citizenship to the satisfaction of the police are also subject to summary deportation, without the automatic right to be heard by a court.

Implicit in the grant of such extraordinary powers in a democracy is the understanding that the exercise of authority will be governed by reason and justice in the broadest possible sense. When these principles are jettisoned, arbitrariness and abuse of power become the norm, exposing, under the brittle veneer of democratic paint, the ugly face of a police state answerable to no one other than itself.

Nitu Singh, a young woman from Nepal, is a final year student at the prestigious Film and Television Institute of India at Pune. On the night of December 5, 2009, the city police landed up at the FTII hostel without any warrant or paperwork, took her into custody, gathered her personal effects and moved her to Mumbai, from where she was deported to Kathmandu the next day.

The only reason cited by the Pune police was that Ms. Singh had indulged in “anti-national activities”. No detail of these alleged activities was provided, no mention was made of which Indian laws she had violated and no attempt was made to substantiate the charges. The Indian Express, which broke the story, quoted Ravindra Sengaonkar, the city’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Branch), as saying: “Nitu Singh was deported to Nepal because she was found to be involved in anti-national activities. It was a high-level secret operation which our team completed successfully in quick time… We are not supposed to share details. The case is high-profile and various investigative agencies are involved.”

Whatever the nature of her “anti-India activities”, one thing is clear: they were not serious enough to warrant the filing of criminal charges. So why was she deported?

Nitu Singh is the wife of Amaresh Singh, a member of Nepal’s Constituent Assembly. He has also served as an interlocutor between the Nepali Congress, which is his own party, the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), and the Government of India, a process in which India’s external intelligence agency, RAW, has been deeply involved.

According to women’s activists in Pune who have taken up her case, Nitu’s deportation was engineered by her husband, from whom she had grown estranged over the past year or so. On his part, Amaresh has denied playing any role in the entire affair.

Of all the issues this deportation involves, the state of the Singh marriage need not detain us. Husbands and wives fight all the time. When global travel is involved, marital disputes can take on very complex dimensions. But what is unusual is the speed with which Nitu’s expulsion from India took place and the “national security” grounds invoked by the authorities. Despite the enormous latitude granted to the police by Section 3 (2) (c) of the Foreigners Act, foreign nationals are usually deported from India (a) if they are illegal migrants, (b) if they have overstayed their visa, (c) if they have finished serving their sentence for any crime they might have been convicted of, or (d) if their presence in the country is deemed by a minister to be prejudicial to public order. In most cases, the process of deportation is so leisurely that some of those targeted even manage to bring their case before a court, or to escape, as the three Pakistanis who relieved themselves of their police escort in Delhi did last week.

In Nitu Singh’s case, however, none of the usual grounds for deportation obtain. That is why those who took the decision to deport her chose “anti-national activities” as the reason. They gambled on the fact that the smokescreen of national security is usually a thick enough deterrent to ward off troublesome questions. While the S.P.S. Rathore case has taught us that no abuse of law or process is beyond the local constabulary, it is hard to imagine the Pune police dreaming up this deportation on their own steam. Indeed, Mr. Sengaonkar gave the game away by speaking of a “high level” operation and the involvement of other agencies. Since the Ministry of Home Affairs under P. Chidambaram has ordered a probe into this matter, one can safely assume that the “agencies” involved are not those that report to the MHA.

In a speech last month, Mr. Chidamabaram drew attention to the fact that several agencies involved in counter-terrorism report not to him but to the Cabinet Secretariat, the Prime Minister’s Office, and the National Security Advisor. Among these are RAW, the Aviation Research Centre and the National Technical Research Organisation. Could one of those agencies have been involved in the deportation? If so, who within the national security establishment decided Nitu Singh was engaging in “anti-national activities” and what evidence do they have to substantiate the charge? Was Amaresh Singh able to influence this process in any way? These are the questions the Home Minister will hopefully ask as he seeks to get to the bottom of a case that makes India look more like a banana republic than a democracy with rule of law.

If the power to expel a foreigner can be exercised so arbitrarily, this is because the power to prevent the movement of citizens within the country is subject to the same degree of caprice and contempt for the rule of law.

A young Adivasi woman named Sambho Sodi who was injured in police firing in Dantewada last year was prevented by the Chhattisgarh police from travelling to Delhi last week for medical treatment to her wounded leg. The grounds for her detention were that the police needed to record her statement about the incident in which she alleges the security forces fired upon unarmed civilians near Gompad village on October 1, 2009. The police, which claimed the Gompad shooting was part of an anti-Naxalite operation, had all the time in the world to record her statement but chose not to do so as long as she was in Dantewada. But the day she needed to travel to Delhi for treatment, they compelled her to get down from the vehicle she was travelling in and took her in for questioning, prompting her colleagues and friends to urgently move the Supreme Court.

On January 7, the Supreme Court ordered the State of Chhatisgarh “not to interfere in any manner whatsoever” with Ms. Sodi coming to Delhi for her medical treatment and to not “create any obstacle in her way”. At the time of going to press, however, activists handling her case said the police had still not cleared her departure for Delhi. Chhattisgarh has become one of India’s most notorious “no rights” zones, where state-supported vigilantes in the name of Salwa Judum and ‘Special Police Officers’ are free to attack those who are critical of the actions of the security forces. As matters stand, the Chhattisgarh government is already in violation of Supreme Court orders on the rehabilitation of Adivasis displaced by the Salwa Judum. How long the state police will prevent Ms. Sodi from travelling to Delhi remains to be seen.

In their own way, Nitu Singh and Shambho Sodi are both victims of a security establishment which operates on the penumbra of legality and whose forays to the dark side frequently remain unseen and unheard. Rare are the moments when we get to shine the light on them, rarer still the times when senior ministers undertake to right a wrong. The media and the judiciary must make the most of these opportunities.