RAW is still raw ?

Well 25 years hence, there won't be a film called " Mumbai - Based on 7/11" (I hate using 7/11, a mindless and spineless and blind adaption by Mr. Sardesai) like a " Munich " not because we will still lack a director of the caliber of Spielberg, but because there won't be a story of revenge.

Atleast Golda Meir had dossiers on the culprits in front of her immediately after the massacre thanks to that unbelievably small, yet unbelievably effective intelligence agency of theirs, Mossad. We on the other hand are going about a blind nation-wide crackdown on "suspects". Agreed that today, India cannot afford a knee-jerk reaction of attacking terrorist camps in POK or even ruthlessly hitting the sleeper cells or the known terrorist outfits inside the borders. A knee jerk reaction always boomerangs. Of all the nations, Israel should know this. 10 years down the line, there will be a suicide bomber who will target a packed Tel-Aviv bus, to seek revenge for his uncle who was like a father-figure to him, who got killed while shopping at a duty-free shop at Beirut airport. And there will be more retaliation and so forth.

But having said that, the intelligence failure of our country cannot be ignored. The Intelligence Bureau "IB" of ours seems like a dilly-dandy outfit which for some reason fails to gather intelligence. Maybe they are busy finding out info on the sex-life of the opposition party leaders or filing reports on why do rich British Indians handsomely donate money to the VHP.

Note: It has so come to my notice, that the word politicians, party leaders keeps popping up on any blog, which tends to analyse the problems of the world today. Co-incidence ? Have we stumbled upon the of pi of how to eradicate problems all together ?

Ex-IB officials have been shouting their lungs out for increasing the budget for the agency. But again politicians....... (kindly take note). Intelligence gathering is an exhaustive task. That scene of intelligence gathering in a suburban Paris cafe is reserved only for the movies. In reality it takes a lot of time and is much much harder. Identifying the informant, finding his reason for the betrayal, correctly recognising his motive, be-friending him and then actually start getting the good stuff out of him, takes a lot of time, dedication and money. Thanks to a very rare good article in The Times of India, I read about how two people shook off IB sleuths on their trail (how did they find out about the sleuths in the first place ?)just by entering an expensive restaurant. The two knew, thanks to the ultra-slim budget of the IB, the sleuths just wont be able to enter an expensive place and voila...no more spies. It was really sad to read that.

Another thing that was mentioned, was that the lapses in intelligence were due to over-dependence on ELINT (Electronic intelligence) rather than HUMINT (Human intelligence), when it is known that the best solution for the intelligence gathering equation is the HUMINT. Apparently RAW has many aircrafts which fly near the western borders and can pick up any telephone call made in Pakistan. But what use would it be if the message is passed strapped on the back of a mule? Also I doubt whether the CCTVs at railway stations would help. They certainly did not prevent the London bombings.

Shouldn't an IB be the baby of the government? Shouldn't the government shower it with money, praise, free rein to do its job? Shouldn't people look upto an agency with pride, and rather not as a punishment posting of some sort? Why can't we emulate a MOSSAD ?

If only there would have been a tip from a Bandya chaiwalla at the city entry-point that some "awaaz" is coming in the city tonight or an info from Chacha polish walla on platform 4 at Churchgate, that 5 suspicious characters have been seen studying the stations for the past one week, this tragedy would definitely have been averted.