FE Editorial : Beyond Patil

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: Two hundred lives lost and an attack on centres of affluence and privilege would seem to have forced a long-awaited change in the UPA’s desperately dull and ineffective anti-terror script. Shivraj Patil had to be offered as a sacrifice at the altar of rising public anger. He would have lost his job earlier in a government more focused on tackling terrorism. P Chidambaram, the new home minister, will almost certainly be more reassuring. Concerns about economic management at a time India is also coping with faltering growth should, on first inspection at least, be addressed by the prime minister taking over the finance ministry. But dramatic job losses in the establishment—more resignations may follow—while necessary, constitute a small part of a serious response to the Mumbai outrage. And sabre-rattling with Pakistan is not the most important issue right now either. The government has already reacted on that. And the whole world knows the problem Pakistan poses. But other major countries make better preparation against such problems. But India’s internal security is characterised by a system failure; a failure that goes back years and implicates about four or five Central governments and both the national parties. We must begin real change by making our intelligence agencies accountable. What do RAW and IB do, how do they do it, what’s the quality of their senior cadre and why do they fail so badly so many times—these are questions that need to be asked and the answers must lead to substantive changes. America has subjected its intelligence agencies to public and closed-door scrutiny more than once, the most recent after 9/11. The Indian system is always very protective of its own. There’s, not to put too fine a point on it, a Faustian bargain between politicians and officials. That cozy compact has to be dumped at sea now.