Tell all, Mr Vajpayee

There are two good reasons. One, governments should always regard a well-informed public as an asset, not a hindrance. Two, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, key sections of the report will be leaked and see the light of day. In one way or another and over time much closely guarded information about 1962, 1965 and 1971 has come into the public domain. So, although it has been the practice since the India-China war to keep reports of military engagements secret, the government should not attempt the impossible.

Far better for the government to put itself on the side of virtue and release the Kargilreport once it is satisfied no security risk is involved. It should do so not six months hence but within the next few weeks. It would be a pity to delay when the committee has completed its job with such admirable despatch.

According to the committee chairman, sensitive, top-secret material which would do harm if it fell into the wrong hands has already been excised from the report. It is also understood there need be no fear of sensitivities of another kind. There is no “finger-pointing”. Even if richly deserved, there has been no awarding of blame to persons in powerful places. Thus the government does not have to worry about demoralisation in this or that quarter or about having its own hand forced by publication of the report.

Altogether it is hard to see any serious reason to hold it back from the public.

Subrahmanyam himself is of the opinion that it is in the government’s interest to share knowledge of what went wrong with the people as also what the remedies might be. How true. Having madenational security a high profile issue during its last term the Vajpayee government was caught off guard when the Kargil incursions took place. That put the government in a very poor light. The country needs to know why it misjudged the situation.

There are proximate and long-term causes of security lapses, technical and policy gaps, and individual and institutional shortcomings all of which should be aired and debated within the system and publicly as a prelude to setting things right. It is not enough to pillory the intelligence agencies, perennial whipping boys since there are so many of them and there can always be said to be an intelligence gap when things go wrong. “Intelligence failure” in the Kargil context meant not only malfunctioning units on the ground but also that those units were badly tasked and their output badly assessed.

That is a crucial issue. It means the problem runs all the way to the top policy-making levels. Was it a misreading of the post Pokhran-II security scenario? Did theLahore bus ride induce complacency? No amount of technical means and new gizmos will help if the security establishment ignores information, misinterprets it or is slow to act on it. All those things happened in Kargil and the country wants to know why.