A Pilot for Patil

The necessary but choking security bundobast New Delhi will witness today, Independence Day, is the perfect departure point for asking why aspects of internal security not dealing with VVIP participation are so ramshackle in this country. The system needs to be fixed at the top first. There8217;ll be no change without political will to drive internal security innovations and political smarts to backstop internal security operations. Yes, let8217;s grant that with perhaps six months to go for general elections, the government cannot change its home minister. That will be de jure recognition of mission unaccomplished; de facto admission had come perhaps six months into the UPA8217;s term.

But, surely, Shivraj Patil can have an effective deputy, an empowered minister of state in charge of internal security? Surely this idea is made attractive for the Congress by the fact that a Nehru-Gandhi Congress prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, was a great backer of it? Among Rajiv8217;s ministers of internal security was P. Chidambaram. Narasimha Rao brought in Rajesh Pilot as junior minister at home to shake things up; the senior minister, S.B. Chavan, was affectionately and otherwise known as the headmaster. Let Patil be the headmaster, or even something more grand, but let the nuts and bolts of internal security be fixed by an energetic junior minister.

The Congress has candidates for the job. Such an appointment will partly fix the huge political problem the home ministry has become for the party. And the appointee will have enough time to do something meaningful. For a determined minister with political backing from the very top half a year provides enough opportunities for refocusing domestic intelligence gathering. True, relations between the senior and junior minister may, like those between Chavan and Pilot in the Rao government, be somewhat fraught. But would Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi rather manage that or continue to live with the scary calm that pervades the home ministry? With Indian cities being serially targeted, with Pakistan getting unstable, with domestic radicalisation a reality, with Jammu and Kashmir back on the boil and with escalating violence from those 8220;boys gone astray8221; 8212; Patil8217;s description of Naxalites; their kill count is higher than that of terrorists 8212; the home ministry simply can8217;t be left as it is. We assume the Congress, for the sake of the country, can find a minister of state.