WANTED: SECRET AGENTS

B.RAMAN

The Government of India has before it two comprehensive reports on the measures that need to be taken for improving our intelligence capabilities and for making our intelligence agencies more efficient and accountable.

2. The first report is part of a larger study on the modernisation of the national security apparatus undertaken by a high-powered Task Force headed by Shri Naresh Chandra, former Cabinet Secretary and presently Convenor of the National Security Advisory Board. It is a classified report prepared after extensive secret  interactions with serving and retired officers of the intelligence agencies and Ministries and Departments dealing with national security which are consumers of the products of the intelligence agencies. The results of secret interactions with senior police officers from States facing internal security problems such as insurgency and terrorism have also gone into the preparation of the report of the intelligence sub-group of the Naresh Chandra Task Force.

3. This sub-group has had access to secret data relating to the functioning of the agencies and the views of the consumers of their products. Its focus has been on the inner core of the problems and difficulties faced by the agencies and their inadequacies as seen by the consumers of their products.

4. The second report has been prepared by a small Task Force set up by the Institute For Defence Studies and Analyses. The three-member Task Force was headed by Shri Rana Banerji, one of the finest Pakistani analysts produced by the R&AW, who retired a couple of years ago. Having been a Task Force not enjoying the cover of the Official Secrets Act, it does not appear to have had the benefit of secret interactions with the serving officers of the intelligence agencies. Its interactions, as one could see from its comprehensive report, have been largely with the community of retired officers.

5. The result naturally has been an over-focus on the external shell of the intelligence community and a lack of insight and understanding of the inner core issues. Among the outer shell issues usefully covered by it are the need for a legislative cover, the importance of external oversight by professionals as well as parliamentary representatives, greater institutional co-ordination etc. These are important issues but hardly touch the inner core issues which really would determine whether India has the intelligence capability it needs now and it would need in the years to come.

6. These two exercises have been undertaken at a time when there has been considerable criticism of our intelligence agencies after the 26/11 terrorist strikes in Mumbai and of their seeming helplessness in neutralising notorious terrorist leaders such as Dawood Ibrahim and Hafiz Mohammed Sayeed of the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Toiba who have been operating with impunity from Pakistani territory since 1993.

7. Our agencies have not so far been able to neutralise Dawood and his accomplices who took shelter in Karachi after the March 1993 terrorist strikes in Mumbai. Nor have they been able to neutralise Sayeed of the Lashkar-e-Toiba. The criticism of our agencies and expressions of disenchantment and scepticism over their functioning by large sections of public opinion have increased after the spectacularly successful US neutralisation of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad on May 2 of last year.

8. A discomfiting question serving and retired intelligence officers often face from their public interlocutors is: If the US intelligence and special forces located thousands of kms away from Pakistan can plan and execute a clandestine intelligence operation of this nature, why the Indian agencies based  next door to Pakistan are not able to do so. They watch helplessly as these terrorist leaders carry out one daring strike after another in the Indian territory.

9. To cover our discomfiture, we often try to put the blame on the political leadership by alleging that our soft political leadership does not allow us to carry out such operations in foreign territory. This is not incorrect, but does not explain adequately our helplessness.

10. Let us presume we get a political leadership like President Barack Obama and he tells our agencies: Forget about foreign territory. Dawood and Sayeed have killed too many Indians. Go and get them. Will our agencies be able to do it? One would be justified in having doubts.

11.That is where the capability of their inner core comes in. The agencies may have the best of legislative cover, parliamentary oversight, co-ordination mechanism etc. But if they do not have  this inner core capability, all these outer shell reforms will be of little use.

12. From time to time, we undertake exercises to revamp our intelligence apparatus. In the past, such exercises were governmental. To my knowledge, the IDSA exercise is the first non-governmental one.

13. All these exercises largely tend to be more academic than practical, more copycating the beaten track of other countries than stimulating innovative ideas of our own. I would have been happier if the recent exercises by the Naresh Chandra Task Force and the IDSA had gathered together a group of serving and retired officers of the agencies and posed the following questions to them for a brain-storming:

(a).Would you have been able to carry out an operation similar to the Abbottabad operation of the CIA? If not, why not?

(b).If you are given political instructions to neutralise Dawood and Sayeed, would you be able to do so? If not, why not?

14. Such brain-storming exercises would have brought   out the state of the inner core of our intelligence agencies and  drawn the attention of our policy-makers to the problems and deficiencies of our agencies.

15. In my limited knowledge, the police Special Branch culture still largely governs the thinking and functioning of our intelligence agencies. They collect intelligence largely on the basis of discussions with casual and peripheral sources having limited access to inside intelligence. Our record in penetration operations has been poor.

16. Forty-four years after the R&AW was formed, it has not been able to develop the culture of the secret agent. It has many brilliant intelligence officers, who function more or less as Special Branch officers operating in foreign territory or as secretive pseudo-diplomats. They are not secret agents in the real sense of the term as it is understood in the intelligence agencies of other countries.

17. A real secret agent is an officer who is a risk-taker, who foregoes diplomatic and other protections and penetrates the sanctum sanctorum of the adversary---whether it be another state or a terrorist organisation--- and clandestinely and successfully carries out opportunistic tasks of the nature assigned by Obama to the CIA officers and Navy Seals who located OBL in Abbottabad and ultimately neutralised him.

18.Unless we are able to develop such an intelligence culture of a secret agent, we will continue functioning as glorified Special Branch officers, collecting useful bits of intelligence here and there, but unable to clandestinely strike at our national adversaries.

19. Why we have not been able to develop such an intelligence culture of secret agents for 44 years and what we should do now to develop it is a question that should be addressed by the Government as it examines the two Task Force reports.(19-6-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

TALIBAN’S SEEMING OVERTURES TO INDIA

B.RAMAN

There has been some understandable curiosity and puzzlement over a statement attributed to the Afghan Taliban which was disseminated on June 17,2012, through the Internet.

2. The statement, provided it is authentic, appeared to be a reaction to the recent visit of Mr.Leon Panetta, the US Defence Secretary, to India and Afghanistan. During his stay in New Delhi, there was speculation in the local media that Mr.Panetta, who made no secret of the USA’s continuing exasperation with Pakistan, was keen that India should play a greater role in the training of the Afghan Army.  This, if true, was a reversal of the past reluctance of the US to encourage an Indian military training role in Afghanistan lest it add to the concerns of Pakistan.

3. These reports regarding Mr.Panetta’s   interest in a greater Indian military training role led to excited comments by non-governmental analysts, but the Government of India itself maintained a discreet silence on the subject. This discreet silence has now been interpreted by the Taliban in the statement attributed to it as amounting to a rejection of the US nudging on this issue.

4.The Indian policy generally has been not to be amenable to pressure from the US to play a military role in areas of strategic interest to the US lest perceptions of Indian military collaboration with the US affect  India’s own interests. When Mr.George Bush was the US President and Mr.Atal Behari Vajpayee was our Prime Minister, the Government of India had resisted US pressure to send Indian troops to Iraq. India did agree  to allow its naval ships to escort through the Malacca Straits US ships on way from the Pacific to the Gulf, but beyond that declined to play any military role.

5. Now that the administration of President Barack Obama is planning to reduce the US military’s operational role in Afghanistan and to increasingly confine the US role to training the Afghan Security Forces, it seems to be keen that India should supplement the US efforts in this regard by undertaking more training missions. This, if correct, would be a reversal of the past policies of the US.

6. US policies with regard to any Indian military training role in Afghanistan have passed through various stages. In the days when the US relations with Islamabad were good, the US was opposed to any Indian military training role keeping in view the concerns of Pakistan. Subsequently, the US did not oppose any training of Afghan military personnel in India, but continued to have reservations about any Indian role on the ground in Afghan soil. The reports on Mr.Panetta’s discussions in New Delhi carried by the Indian media indicated that as a result of the US exasperation with Pakistan over its stopping the transit of logistic supplies for the NATO forces through its territory, the US was inclined to reduce its reservations and encourage a more active Indian role. It is not clear whether the reported change in the US views was tactical to spite Pakistan or strategic and would be enduring.

7. The Government of India needs to be congratulated for not jumping into responding positively to the US suggestions and for taking time to examine the implications of an increased Indian military training role. While there need be no reservations about increasing the training of Afghan military personnel in Indian territory, increased ground involvement of Indian military personnel in Afghan soil could have long-term implications that need to be carefully examined with our feet firmly on the ground.

8. The Taliban has chosen to interpret the lack of open Indian enthusiasm for the ideas of Mr.Panetta as Indian rejection of the US feelers on this issue. One should not be surprised  if the Taliban statement encouraging India to turn down the US feelers  had been drafted in consultation with Islamabad.

9. The Taliban statement goes beyond giving its reactions to the perceived lack of positive outcome to Mr.Panetta’s discussions in New Delhi. It repeats a formulation of September 1998 of the Taliban, issued when it was in power in Kabul, in which it had expressed its benign intentions towards India and sought to remove any impression that it might be hostile to Indian interests because of India’s close association with the Government of Najibullah. It had claimed in that statement that the Taliban did not believe in exporting jihad to other countries and that while the Taliban supported the right of the Kashmiris to self-determination, it would not get involved in the insurgency on the ground in Jammu & Kashmir. An analysis made by me in September 1999 on the attitude of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to India may be seen  at http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/%5Cpapers%5Cpaper83.html

10. Things have changed considerably on the ground since then. Gulbuddin Heckmatyar’s Hizbe Islami, which was having serious differences with the Taliban in 1998, is now its ally. The Hizbe Islami, close to the Jamaat-e-Islami of Pakistan, has been actively involved in training ISI-sponsored Pakistani jihadi organisations that are active against India. The Haqqani Network, which had no importance in 1998, has now come to the forefront and has been acting in tandem with Al Qaeda on the one side and the Taliban on the other.

11. Both the Hizbe Islami and the Haqqani Network are implacably opposed to India. The involvement of the Haqqani Network in acts of terrorism against the Indian Embassy in Kabul, in complicity with the Lashkar-e-Toiba, was strongly suspected. The Taliban has done nothing to dissociate itself from the anti-India activities of the Hizbe Islami and the Haqqani Network. The Taliban may not believe in exporting jihad to other countries, but it has not discouraged or condemned terrorist attacks on Indian nationals and interests in Afghanistan.

12. Against this background, caution should be the keyword in determining our reaction. Our interests in Afghanistan, which are considerable and important, will be best served by strengthening the durability  and the stability of the Hamid Karzai Government which has entered into a strategic partnership with India. It is not in our interest for the Taliban to prevail on the ground in Afghanistan.

13. We should continue to work in close co-operation with the Hamid Karzai Government while examining whether we should expand our supportive role in Afghanistan and how. At the same time, sense of realism should indicate that the Taliban is not a spent force. It has shown tremendous resilience. It is going to be an important factor in the ground situation. It would, therefore, be in the common interest of India and the Karzai Government not to spurn the positive-seeming feelers of the Taliban.

14. We should maintain a low level of backchannel interaction with the Taliban by taking advantage of its presence in Qatar in order to understand its positive feelers and encourage it on the path of national reconciliation in Afghanistan. ( 18-6-12 )

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

GAMES THAT MAMATA PLAYS

B.RAMAN

The remark of Miss Mamata Banerjee that the game is not yet over has given rise to a fresh bout of speculation regarding the possible political scenarios in the wake of her losing the Presidential poll cards as a result of her badly and impulsively playing them.

2.In my view, for Mamata, the Presidential game is over. She will not be able to retrieve her cards. If she was trying to hint that she still has some cards up her sleeve, she was just whistling in the dark in a moment of understandable petulance. Nothing more.

3.Once Dr. Abdul Kalam decides not to be a losing candidate and spoil his brilliant record in India’s contemporary history, nothing can stop Shri Pranab Mukherjee from winning. The only question now is whether Shri P.A.Sangma will withdraw thereby enabling Pranabda to win unopposed or will he remain in the field as a mark of  protest over the non-nomination of a tribal candidate for India’s high office. Even if Sangma remains, Pranabda’s win is certain.

4. My own feeling is that the political managers of Mrs.Sonia Gandhi, who have proved adept in managing and overcoming what seemed a major embarrassment, will now focus on placating Sangma either by offering to support Sangma himself or a tribal candidate of mutual choice such as James Lyngdoh, former Chief Election Commissioner, as the Vice-President in order to satisfy his tribal pride.

5. The speculation and assessments that with the storm over the Presidential elections blowing over, it will now be smooth-sailing for the Congress and the UPA till 2014 are over-optimistic. Mamata’s Presidential game is practically over. Her pinpricks game will continue. Even before the controversy over the Presidential polls she had repeatedly demonstrated her pinpricks value. That value remains intact and could increase in the coming weeks as a result of political developments in Andhra Pradesh. One understands from  sources in Delhi that the political managers of the Congress are worried over the dangers of  Shri Jagan Mohan Reddy being able to induce large-scale defections of Congress MLAs and MPs following the electoral triumph of his supporters in the bye-elections the results of which were announced on June 15.

6. If that scenario materialises, the political roller coaster will continue. The Union Cabinet headed by Dr.Manmohan Singh is now facing pinpricks from West Bengal. It may start facing pinpricks from AP too.

7.There are various speculations as to what Mamata can do next. One view is that being an emotional person, she may be thawed by Pranabda’s references to her as “almost like my sister” and she will be a mellowed person now so far as the Presidential polls are concerned. She has herself sought to give the impression that she is far from mellowed.

8.Permanent defiance is a defining characteristic of Mamata. The Communists learnt it to their cost in WB. She will be looking for ways of fresh defiance of New Delhi even if she has lost her Presidential cards.

9.Dr.Manmohan Singh is not going to regain his credibility as a result of the feel good atmosphere in the Congress following the favourable developments relating to the Presidential polls. The political crisis that seemed to be looming on this issue has been skilfully overcome by the political managers of Mrs.Sonia Gandhi.

9. The national crisis due to public perceptions of large-scale corruption, collapse of governance and the economic downslide continues. ( 16-6-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

CORRECTION TO MY ARTICLE TITLED “THE DRAMA OVER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS”

B.RAMAN

I have been in receipt of the following comments regarding what I had stated about the role of Jawaharlal Nehru in the non-nomination of Rajaji as the Congress Party’s candidate to be the first President of India.

COMMENT NO.1

Your account of Rajaji not making it to the President's post doesn't conform to what really happened.          

Nehru actually wanted Rajaji as President and worked hard in his favour. But a section of the Congress, dominated by North Indian hardliners, strongly resisted the idea touting the ground that Rajaji had worked against the Congress during 1942-47, by actually canvassing for partition and by keeping out of  the Quit India movement. Ultimately Nehru succumbed to the pressure to make Rajendra Prasad the President,. However, to show his solidarity with Rajaji and where his true feelings lay, Nehru accompanied Rajaji to the airport at the time he left for Chennai and saw him off after a warm embrace.

          CS (C.Subramanian) also says in his HAND OF DESTINY that Nehru backed Rajaji but had to yield to critics of Rajaji's past actions.

COMMENT NO 3

Thank you very much for this article which is excellent, as usual, and is an appeal for sanity. Whether Sonia Gandhi and her sycophants as well as Mulayam Yadav would heed it during the very short time at their disposal remains to be seen. There is one point, however, from which I must dissent.

Whatever the feeling at that time in "Madras"  in 1950, the fact is that Nehru tried hard and persistently to get Rajaji  elected as India's first president. But the support for Rajendra Prasad within the Congress party was much too strong. Moreover, Rajen Babu had full support of Vallabhbhai Patel. At one stage, under much persuation by Nehru, Prasad thought of withdrawing from the race but Patel taunted him: "What can the baraat do when the dulha (groom) runs away?"

COMMENT NO 3

A reader has also drawn my attention to an article on this subject carried by “The New York Times” on June 14,2012, available at
http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/politicking-began-with-indias-very-first-president/

In view of the account from these three excellent sources, my statement that Nehru did not support the candidature of Rajaji for being the first President of India is incorrect. I stand corrected.

--

THE DRAMA OVER THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS

B.RAMAN

Political controversies before and during the Presidential elections are nothing new. We have seen them before. They are part of the democratic process,

2. I still remember the debate and unhappiness triggered among large sections of the admirers of Rajaji, particularly in the then undivided Madras State, over the perceived reluctance of Jawaharlal Nehru, the then Prime Minister, to support the nomination of Rajaji, the then Governor-General,  for election as the first President of the Republic of India after the promulgation of the Constitution.

3.Nehru worked hard for the nomination of Dr.Rajendra Prasad as the first President and he was ultimately elected. Nehru explained his decision not to support the continuance of Rajaji as the head of state with the argument that the Congress required his services in the Madras State, where the Dravidian movement was gathering strength..

4. Nehru’s argument did not convince many of us---including me---in Madras. We believed in our heart of hearts that Nehru did not want the independent-minded, the rightist-oriented and the intellectually brilliant Rajaji as the first President. So, he had him eased out from Delhi.

5. The new generation of Dravidian leaders then coming up perceived Nehru’s easing out of Rajaji as reflecting the basic prejudice of North Indian leaders against those from the South. This added to their determination to fight for a Dravidian political movement with Dravidian objectives.

6. Even though we felt unhappy over Nehru’s easing out of Rajaji, we did not make a drama out of it. We accepted it in our stride and maintained our sense of political balance. It did not affect our admiration for Nehru.

7. We faced another controversy during the Presidential elections of 1969 when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister and V.V. Giri supported by her and her followers in the Congress Party defeated N.Sanjiva Reddy, the official candidate of the Party. The controversy was the outcome of her feelings of humiliation over her views as to who should be the party nominee not being given importance by the Party leadership, then known as the Syndicate.

8. Indira Gandhi saw the nomination of Sanjiva Reddy as the candidate by the Party leadership overriding her objections, as Prime Minister, to him as an ill-concealed attempt by the Syndicate to restrict her powers and manoeuvrability as the PM and to use Sanjiva Reddy to keep her under control.

9. She revolted against this with the support of a new generation of Congress leaders and ultimately prevailed. Giri was elected and the designs of the Syndicate to keep her under check failed. Those of us like me, who had just then joined the corridors of power in Delhi, still remember the heat and drama that accompanied the election.

10. The drama of 1969 took place at a time of a major crisis inside the Congress Party, but not in the nation. There was no major crisis of governance. The economy was doing badly, but not too badly. The credibility of the Prime Minister was good. The success of Giri supported by her  added to her credibility and political self-confidence and set in motion a process of psychological upswing that led to her triumphs of 1971.

11.The tussle for power and influence between her and the Syndicate in the Party was dramatic and kept the attention of the nation gripped, but there was nothing petty about it. Regional leaders outside the Congress fold did not play much of a role in the drama. It was essentially an in-house drama in the Congress from which she emerged triumphant.

12. The 1969 events were thus largely an inner party drama which did not have much of a damaging impact on the nation. The unedifying drama that we are witnessing presently over the forthcoming Presidential elections marks a total collapse of leadership in the Union Cabinet  as well as in the Congress Party. It is not an inner party drama.

13.It is a national drama taking place at a time when governance is in a shambles, when the credibility of the Prime Minister, never high in the past, has reached its nadir, when the Prime Minister as a political and constitutional entity has virtually  ceased to exist and when the economy is on the downslide.

14. The drama of 1969 was the result of the assertion by the Prime Minister of her right to have a say as to who should be the candidate of the party in the Presidential elections. Nothing illustrates more ominously the extent of the collapse of the image and the authority of  Prime Minister  Dr.Manmohan Singh than the fact that he seems to be playing no role in the current drama. His views just don’t count either in the Party or in the Government or in the nation.

15. Over the last one year, one had seen the inexorable withering away of the credibility and the  authority of the  Prime Minister. We are now witnessing the process of the withering away of the image and influence of Mrs.Sonia Gandhi too as the President of the Congress. The maladroit manner in which she has handled the important prelude to the Presidential elections would bring no credit to her or her party.

16. The Congress Party, under her leadership, has totally failed to foresee and appreciate the importance and the likely complexities of the forthcoming Presidential elections which would be taking place at a time of national crisis of worrisome proportions.

17. As the leader of the largest single political formation, one would have expected her to intelligently and imaginatively  steer and control the pre-Presidential political process, keeping the control in her hands all the time while accommodating the wishes and sensitivities of the coalition partners of her party. She has badly failed to do so.

18. As a result, the Presidential poll process is in a roller coaster ride. If this is not arrested, there is a danger of this roller coaster ride affecting the governance too. One ought to blame two political leaders for this roller coaster. Mrs.Sonia Gandhi for her inept handling of the pre-Presidential process and Miss Mamata Banerjee for the way she has allowed her unfortunate and unsatiated  ego to vitiate the entire process.

19. Now is the time for all well-wishers of the nation to re-introduce an element of sanity and sobriety into the process. Dr.Abdul Kalam, the much revered former President and ethical role model, and Shri Mulayam Singh Yadav, one of the most intelligent political leaders we have, should decline to let themselves be further used by Miss Mamata Banerjee in her divisive political games. The search for a consensus candidate and for an honourable end to the Presidential poll process has to be  pursued vigorously.

20. The immediate objective is to arrest this vitiation and to bring the Presidential poll process to an honourable culmination. Thereafter, it is important for the Congress  to initiate an exercise for bidding a dignified  farewell  to Dr. Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister,  to democratise the functioning of the Congress Party so that its fortunes are not damaged further by a maladroit leadership and to go for premature elections even at the risk of losing them. The nation and its economy cannot afford to continue any longer with the present sleep-walking of Dr.Manmohan Singh and his Cabinet. ( 15-6-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt of India, New Delhi, and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate, Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-Mail: seventyone2@gmail.com . Twitter: @SORBONNE75 )

CONGRESS CAUGHT IN A BIND--AN INTRACTABLE POLITICAL SITUATION

B.RAMAN

The Congress Party finds itself caught in a bind by the decision of the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Trinamool Congress of Miss Mamata Banerjee to propose in public their own options as possible Presidential candidates which are totally different from  the preferences of the Congress.

2. According to the TMC, the preferences of the Congress  are Shri Pranab Mukherjee , the Finance Minister, and Dr.Hamid Ansari, the Vice-President. Shri Yadav and Miss Banerjee have sought to circumvent the preferences of the Congress without having to reject them by proposing three options of their own, namely,Dr.Abdul Kalam, former President, Prime Minister Dr.Manmohan Singh and Shri Somnath Chatterjee, former Speaker of the Lok Sabha.

3. Through their preferences indicated in public, Shri Yadav and Miss Banerjee have sought to convey three messages to Mrs.Sonia Gandhi, the Congress President.Firstly, the political paralysis and the economic melt-down in the country can be broken only by changing the Prime Minister without humiliating him. Secondly, the only way of doing so will be by elevating him as the President.Thirdly, if Mrs.Sonia Gandhi wants a Congress candidate as the President, it can be only Dr.Manmohan Singh and not Shri Pranab  Mukherjee.

4. The Congress is now facing two cruel alternatives both of which could cause it a loss of face.Firstly, it defiantly goes ahead with the candidature of Shri Pranab Mukherjee hoping that he could somehow scrape through.This could be unlikely if the SP and the TMC manage to persuade Dr.Kalam to contest against Pranabda.If Kalam is a candidate against Pranabda, the NDA allies and the Tamil Parties from Tamil Nadu may join the SP and the TMC in supporting him thereby making it difficult for Pranabda to win. Shri Karunanidhi has hinted on many occasions that while he may have no problem in supporting Pranabda, the situation could change for his party if there is a son of the soil from Tamil Nadu in the fray.

5. Secondly or alternatively, the Congress could accept the face-saving offered by the SP and the TMC by dumping Pranabda and persuading Dr.Manmohan Singh to contest the Presidential poll. Such a decision by the Congress could have a negative impact on both Pranabda and Dr.MMS and could be seen as a loss of face by both of them.

6.This could create a serious crisis in the Congress, thereby further damaging its authority and credibility and further affecting its ability to continue to govern the country.If a non-Congress candidate such as Abdul Kalam becomes the President, the Congress may not be able to suggest new elections at a time of its choosing because the President may not accept its recommendation.

7. From the developments of June 13, it is fairly clear that by its ham-handed handling of the search for a Presidential candidate, the Congress Party has lost control of the political ground situation.Whichever way the situation evolves, it will be seen as a loss of face for the Congress.

8. The definite loss for the Congress need not necessarily be a definite gain for the opposition parties because their political incompatibilities are bound to come out in the open and render the situation intractable as the Presidential elections approach. ( 13-6-12)

( The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet Secretariat, Govt. of India, New Delhi,and, presently, Director, Institute For Topical Studies, Chennai, and Associate of the Chennai Centre For China Studies. E-mail: seventyone2@gmail.com. Twitter: @SORBONNE75)