Loose cannons?
A cultural change seems to have taken place at the top of the armed services. Instead of a soldierly silence on matters that could be deemed to be still under discussion by the civilian authorities, or that touch upon sensitive matters of internal security, the leaders of our military seem to be willing to discuss, at length and in public, decisions that most feel should probably be weighed with considerably more care than appears to be on display. Most recently, Air Chief Marshal P.V. Naik has unburdened himself of his view that the chief of defence staff is a position that is unnecessary and before its time. Meanwhile, the government has allowed uncertainty to persist over whether the army chief, General V.K. Singh’s age may be amended, with obvious consequences for many senior armymen.
Taken together, these instances revive apprehensions that no one is in control at the ministry of defence to address what is now an open disconnect between the civilian and military leaderships. Whenever such a disconnect happened in the past, national security had been diminished. It is, for instance, far from clear whether Naik’s opinion on the CDS is the opinion of the air force as a whole, of its current head, of the services in general, or of the defence ministry. That is, indeed, one of the central problems caused by undue loquaciousness among the heads of the services. The persuasiveness or not of his views apart, such half-considered statements are not best made in the public glare — these are, in any case, decisions that are made by the government. Earlier, the army and IAF chiefs had similarly weighed in on deploying the armed forces in areas affected by Naxal violence. More recently, General V.K. Singh told the public that India’s armed forces had the “capability” to carry out an Abbottabad-like operation if they were so ordered to.
Closing the door
The decision to exclude the Central Bureau of Investigation from the Right to Information Act’s ambit has been widely questioned — now, the Madras high court has asked for a clearer rationale for the decision, and opinion was visibly divided within the government and even among previous CBI chiefs.
The CBI has been bundled with the National Investigative Agency and the National Intelligence Grid to justify this exemption. However, it’s not primarily concerned with “security and intelligence functions” that are explicitly left out of the RTI Act, but with cases of corruption and crime. Though the agency has cloudily argued that it “has investigated/ is investigating extremely sensitive and important cases having inter-state/ international ramifications”, RTI requests would not have applied to ongoing investigations anyway. The CBI also cites a “mosaic theory” — that seemingly innocuous bits of information can be pieced together to draw large conclusions, and argues that its file-notings are too free-spoken and revealing to be given away. However, other sensitive and elevated offices have submitted to these processes, to no visible harm. The problem is, these arguments stem from a reflexive suspicion of the citizen, which undercuts the very premise of RTI and maximum disclosure. RTI exemptions must be narrowly defined, and ideally they should be case-specific, rather than an entire category being swept out of the public domain. The harm should be demonstrably greater than the public interest in disclosure, and restrictions that serve to shield the official agency from embarrassment or exposure have no place in these exemptions. The one argument that make sense is that the CBI is too understaffed to keep up with a flood of RTI requests — but that’s a working glitch the government must, and can, fix, instead of using it to draw the curtains over the CBI’s work.
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