As IB Celebrates Foundation Day, It Must Learn From Past Glories

In an Intelligence meeting, a senior IB officer began the briefing, and after a few minutes, he made a glaring mistake; the then Director of IB Atma Jayaram IPS(Retd) made a quick remark:" Gentleman, a cat has nine lives, an Intelligence Officer has one" and reiterated the fact that IB could not afford to make mistakes, Former R&AW chief recalls. Tomorrow i,e, 23rd December, the Intelligence Bureau will observe its foundation day. While the Intelligence Bureau remembers the sacrifices and glory, it must learn from its glorious past, especially from highly competent Directors. The Intelligence Bureau must take its former DIB words seriously: "IB could not afford mistakes". The present securtiy ladscape demands an error free apporach from Intelligence agencies but for IB some lessons still needs to learned. Top sources say that earlier IB's assessment game was quite strong, especially in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Political leadership did influence IB's work. However, the present leadership has strengthened IB's budget and helped IB to enhance its operational preparedness. As IB had made structural and functional improvements at the exterior level, its echelons needed to develop high-quality strategic thinking to make robust inter-agency coordination and take strong pre-emptive steps without getting into contradictions and confusion. The glories past of IB evidence the fact that there were many spot-on analyses, whether it is the capture of Yasin Bhatkal under former IB chief Syed Asif Ibrahim or providing on-ground support in Operation Chanakya in infiltrating terror groups in J&K and error-free connection of dots in Intel assessments, top sources say. Though we urgently need Operation Chanakya 2.0 or Sarp Vinash 2.0 in J&K for this, IB's echelons must do some minute configurations- drop their obsession with "cut copy-paste assessments". Top sources say that some IB echelons, especially its SIB units, are obsessed with making the analysis a cut-copy-paste job. Therefore, to ensure IB's strong response and realise its past glories, structural makeovers are not sufficient. Its officers also require some makeovers.