Former Special Secretary of RAW (India’s external intelligence agency), V Balachandran, asserts that ‘Police intelligence in Mumbai is very poor’. He also goes on to say very damning things about the intelligence setup in the country and especially in Mumbai…

Those days, the Special Branch had a special wing called ‘the watchers branch.’ The watchers used to mingle with local people, shop owners, roadside vendors and taxi drivers. They were the eyes and ears of the police. They briefed senior intelligence officers about what was happening in the city. That was a credible intelligence-gathering network.

But sadly, the watchers branch was disbanded. Now all the useless officers and constables are appointed in the Special Branch. Now the posting in the intelligence wing is regarded as punishment.

This is pretty much what I was trying to say in my post, a few days back. Moreover, Balachandran also talks about why the brightest and the best in the police department no longer want to work in the intelligence department…

No police officer wants to work in the Special Branch now because there is no corruption there. You cannot make money out of the intelligence department. The temptations for working in an average police station are such that everybody wants to take up those posts, which would fetch them money.

I think we have systematically killed police intelligence in Mumbai and in other parts of the country. Unless we reorient and give emphasis to credible police intelligence system, similar bomb blasts would continue to hit Mumbai.

While it’s true that policing a city like Mumbai is not an easy job and the gathering and analyzing intelligence in such a crowded and vast city is next to impossible, it still does not exonerate the politicians and police officials from the charge of breaking down one of the best internal intelligence setups in the world.

A welcome fallout of the Cola controversy is that the Govt. has issued draft norms, for beverages, in the form of a draft notification to amend the Prevention of Food Adulteration Rules, 1955.

Under the proposed amendments, the ministry of health and family welfare has suggested more stringent limits for the presence of pesticides, insecticides and heavy metals in all kinds of beverages.

While this tightening of limits is a welcome step, it still is hardly enough to check the presence of impurities in these beverages. One reason for that is the fact that it’s just a set of rules that the Govt. is proposing to amend. These are merely suggestions for the industry to adhere to. They are not enforced in any way by the authorities. It is upto the beverage manufacturers to implement these rules of their own accord. The Govt. has merely raised the bar. It has not made it mandatory for the industry to clear the bar… leaving space for anybody to sneak beneath the bar.