Across india?s metropolitan cities there is a feel good sense about where India is headed, with fancy shopping malls, fast cars and glitzy office spaces adding to it all. But outside our metros, things are in a mess. And if matters are allowed to get any worse, then India Inc and it dreams of a roaring economy, will remain, just dreams! This is the sum of Ved Marwah?s honest, no holds barred account, of India in turmoil.
Marwah?s frustration with the system is barely absent from any of the pages of this book, leading him to state that, ?there is so much corruption at the top that one can imagine its fallout at the lower levels of administration?. He should know, having been Delhi?s commissioner of Police, the DG NSG and Governor of four troubled Indian states. He was both a civil servant and then a political appointee. It is rare for someone from within the system to be so explicitly critical of the system itself. But having said so much, one wishes that the author should have said it all. He does mention the odd name, like that of ND Tiwari who advised the then Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, from taking action against the UP?s PAC for the blatant murders of Muslims in Meerut, but I wish he had given the names of so many of those who he has alluded to in this book. Instances of complete incompetence, negligence or political expediency that has led to the mess that lies outside India?s metros.
The book not only has much detail in the chapters on India?s troubled regions ? with fires burning from India?s north eastern region to Kashmir, and along the red corridor created by the Naxalites ? but also interesting nuggets of information. For instance, how a former DG of Punjab Police took the credit from the NSG after Op-Black Thunder and emerged as a hero and enjoys much media attention; or how Sheikh Mujib told the author more than once on his flight from London in 1972, that ?where else, except in India?s north east, would our people find land to survive?. No wonder then that Bangladesh?s DGFI is trying to get India?s north east to break away with the help of the ever willing ISI.
And while India?s politicians are often at the receiving end of all our criticism, it is not just them, but India?s elusive bureaucracy and the inapproachable police forces that must equally be blamed for India being torn apart. For too long India?s bureaucrats have got away with privileges but without accountability for the mess they?ve created, as this blow by blow account of India?s north east, Punjab, Kashmir and the Maoists tells us.
Two recurring themes run through this book. How narrow parochial political agendas and complete administrative neglect have left India with an internal security mess that is far greater than what Pakistan?s ISI can ever hope to achieve. And our leaders continue to ignore it all, because many of them don?t know where to begin solving these problems.
We have had Union Home Secretaries who rarely venture outside of Delhi or Heads of Police Forces who have spent a better part of the lives as intelligence spooks and have no idea of policing on the ground. And the situation gets worse, as sycophants are given sensitive appointments with little understanding of what must be done. Tragically though, Ved Marwah?s commendable effort will perhaps remain what it is, a warning of the greater troubles that lie ahead. But a warning, which in all probability will be ignored.
The writer is a defence expert