In India, all secret agents are picked from the ubiquitous Indian Police Service (IPS) pool, which comprises mostly of people from small towns in India who wish to elevate their social rank through an exam where they pass after mugging small details of sociology, history or geography or current news. This bunch is trained to ride roughshod over the common public and not espionage.
People working for intelligence agencies are quite predictable, especially in two cases. One, in countries where the secret agents are usually selected from a pool of government employees who have been hired after passing a bookish exam and two, to people who are also trained in the art of detecting bullshit such as long time investigative print journalists.
In India, all secret agents are picked from the ubiquitous Indian Police Service (IPS) pool, which comprises mostly of people from small towns in India who wish to elevate their own social rank through an exam where they pass after mugging small details of sociology, history or geography or current news. Few of them have an inquisitive mind. IPS officers mostly thrive on arrogance owing to their social and professional position not counting their princely retinue. In short, IPS officers are the same clan that was selected by the imperialist British to work for them. That same attitude, that same expectation from their job and society.
IAS officers are a similar bunch, but that is a story for another day.
In the late nineties, I visited the Irish Embassy to meet the Deputy Ambassador (High Commissioner?) I wanted to discuss consulting opportunities. The Ambassador, who I knew through an Irish friend, had personally recommended me. I had lunch at the Taj Palace with the Deputy Ambassador and he dropped me off at my then work place at Green Park. I am sure the Deputy Ambassador was Irish Intelligence and wanted to know what I did for a living. Sure enough, two days later, a fellow turned up selling Moser Baer CDs and wanted to know what my job was. I laughed out loud and asked him that I had been expecting him and wanted to know if he was Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing or Irish Intelligence. Maybe, I asked that I was specially priviledged and that he was MI6. He left in a hurry with a face flushed with government clerical incapacity. I understood that he was Indian intelligence.
Similarly, I had dived deep into research on Israeli society and public administration. I was aiming at a PhD. Maybe from an Indian university or if it was possible from Tel Aviv University. I did an extensive course on the holocaust through Edx.com and wrote to the Israeli embassy an year later to assist in their war effort so that I could learn much more about Israeli social processes. Low and behold, I received an email from a lady who wished to know how much I had learnt from the course I had undertaken. I wrote back saying that it was obvious that she was trying to gauge my political standing and vetworthiness in helping with the Israeli war effort as a public policy professional and media expert; so without beating about the bush can we meet? In reply that email id vapourised into thin air and her phone number ceased to exist too.
Decades ago, during a tense time in Delhi when some terrorist attacks had happened, I went to meet a friend who worked at the Rajya Sabha Secretariat. We sat the central seating area. I noticed that a mouse faced individual who acted as if a bit of seaweed was permanently stuck in his anus, kept following us keeping a distance of 30 feet or so. His attempts at subterfuge were so stupid that a coolie in Old Delhi Railway Station who wanted to steal my luggage had a better chance at fooling the victim. I responded by walking up to him and inviting him to join us. His face cowered and glowered at me at the same time as if to say how dare I do the unthinkable.
Once I was dragged into one of those regrettable Bengali associations where Durga Pujo, Saraswati Pujo and Jogodhatri Pujo are the be all and end all of social existence. As is my habit, I tried to rationalise the meetings with a Facebook page as other social media platforms had not gained any traction yet. One smart alec sidled up to me in the corner and whispered, “I don’t have a Facebook account. My job does not allow me to have one.” He obviously meant that he was someone high up in the Home Ministry ladder and that he had to be venerated. I shot back, “don’t feel bad. Not everyone gets a job of their choice or liking. We make do with the trash we are meted with in life. Right?” He nearly crunched all his teeth and spewed them out.
Usually, a person who has a fixed salary every month coming to his bank account that is assured for life, usually develops a certain flavour of stupidity. Government employees and employees of lala companies are no exception.
I know without confirmation from the other party that I have encountered the CIA, the KGB, the MSS and definitely Indian intelligence agencies many times in my lifetime and have responded to them equally insultingly. I usually find their work unimaginative and having lack of background knowledge.
No government activity in India comes from a detailed training with exposure to real life situations and ground level reality except the military. I hope things change with the visionary Prime Minister we currently have. Shri Narendra Modi has the requisite gumption and vision to make this happen.
The deep ‘predictable’ state: Intelligence, arrogance and the poverty of imagination
There is a comforting myth that intelligence agencies are populated by extraordinary minds—men and women with uncommon intuition, intellectual agility, and a deep understanding of human complexity. Popular culture reinforces this fantasy relentlessly. From Le Carré to Hollywood, intelligence officers are portrayed as polymaths who can read a room faster than others read a book, who understand societies better than the societies understand themselves. The reality, particularly in bureaucratic states like India, is far less romantic and far more predictable.
People working for intelligence agencies are remarkably easy to spot once one understands the conditions under which they are recruited and trained. Predictability sets in especially under two circumstances. First, in countries where secret agents are recruited from a rigid pool of government employees selected through competitive but fundamentally memory-based examinations. Second, when these agents encounter individuals trained—by profession or temperament—to detect obfuscation, manipulation, and what can only be described as institutionalised nonsense. Long-time investigative journalists, and astute policy researchers can immediately detect intelligence agency bullshit.
India’s intelligence ecosystem suffers from both these weaknesses simultaneously. In India, intelligence officers are overwhelmingly drawn from the Indian Police Service. The IPS is not an intelligence service by design; it is a law-and-order cadre. Its recruitment process privileges obedience, rote learning, and social conformity over curiosity, lateral thinking, or cultural depth. The typical IPS officer is drawn from a small-town background, armed with impressive perseverance and ambition, but often limited exposure to the wider world. The civil services examination rewards the ability to memorize fragments of sociology, geography, history, and current affairs, reproduce them under pressure, and conform to an expected ideological tone. It does not reward skepticism, imagination, or intellectual risk-taking.
This is not a moral indictment of individuals; it is a structural critique. The system selects for a particular personality type and then reinforces its worst tendencies. The result is an officer class that frequently confuses authority with intelligence and power with insight. Many IPS officers thrive on a cultivated arrogance that flows from their social elevation, their uniforms, their retinues, and the unchallenged deference they receive. They are heirs, whether consciously or not, to the same administrative ethos the British Empire used to govern India—rule from above, observe from a distance, and never question the moral certainty of the state.
My own encounters with intelligence agencies—Indian and foreign—have been frequent enough, and transparent enough, to strip away any lingering mystique. In the late 1990s, I visited the Irish Embassy in Delhi to explore consulting opportunities. The Irish Ambassador, whom I knew through a personal connection, recommended that I meet his deputy. We had lunch at the Taj Palace as his guest, spoke at length, and he dropped me off at my workplace in Green Park. The conversation was courteous, probing, and clearly evaluative. I had little doubt that the deputy ambassador was connected to Irish intelligence, or at least tasked with assessing me.
Two days later, a man appeared at my office selling Moser Baer CDs—a popular cover in those days for door-to-door peddling. His real interest, however, was not optical media. He wanted to know what I did for a living. The attempt was so crude that it bordered on parody. I laughed openly and told him that I had been expecting him. I asked, with exaggerated politeness, whether he was from the Intelligence Bureau, the Research and Analysis Wing, Irish intelligence, or—given my obvious importance—MI6. His face flushed with the familiar expression of bureaucratic incompetence caught in daylight. He left hurriedly, abandoning both his sales pitch and his dignity. I knew then, with near certainty, that he was Indian intelligence.
The episode was amusing, but it was also instructive. It revealed the lack of coordination, imagination, and subtlety that characterises much of India’s intelligence work. The foreign diplomat was professional and discreet. The domestic agency responded with a clerk pretending to be a salesman.
A similar pattern emerged years later when I immersed myself in research on Israeli society and public administration. I was considering a PhD, either in India or, if possible, at Tel Aviv University. I undertook a rigorous online course on the Holocaust through edX and, after completing it, wrote to the Israeli embassy expressing my interest in assisting in Israel’s war-related public policy or media efforts. I was contacted by a woman who asked pointed questions about what I had learned from the course.
It was obvious to me that this was not academic curiosity but political vetting. I replied candidly, stating that I understood she was assessing my ideological position and trustworthiness. I suggested that instead of dancing around the issue, we meet in person. After that email, the address vanished. Her phone number ceased to exist. The silence was eloquent. Engagement was possible only so long as the power dynamic remained opaque. Transparency, even when offered in good faith, was unwelcome.
Even Indian intelligence, during periods of heightened internal tension, has demonstrated a striking lack of sophistication. Decades ago, during a particularly sensitive time in Delhi marked by terrorist attacks, I visited a friend working at the Rajya Sabha Secretariat. As we sat in the central seating area, I noticed a man following us at a conspicuous distance of roughly thirty feet. His body language was tense, his movements awkward, his attempts at discretion laughable. He looked like a man permanently uncomfortable in his own skin, as though suspicion itself had lodged somewhere painful.
His surveillance was so obvious that even a porter at Old Delhi Railway Station attempting petty theft would have shown greater finesse. Eventually, I walked up to him and invited him to join us. His face contorted in a mixture of fear and outrage—as if I had violated some sacred rule by acknowledging his existence. How dare the subject notice the observer?
This reaction revealed the core flaw of bureaucratic intelligence: it depends on asymmetry. The moment that asymmetry collapses—when the watched watches back—the system panics.
Underlying all these encounters is a deeper malaise. A person who receives a fixed salary every month, guaranteed for life, often develops a particular flavour of intellectual stagnation. This is not unique to government employees; it afflicts employees of large, paternalistic private enterprises as well. Security without accountability breeds complacency. Complacency erodes curiosity. Curiosity is the lifeblood of intelligence work.
Without curiosity, intelligence agencies become collectors of trivia rather than interpreters of reality. They accumulate files but fail to understand people. They monitor conversations but miss intentions. They record movements but misunderstand motivations. The work becomes unimaginative, procedural, and ultimately ineffective.
I am reasonably certain—without any official confirmation—that I have crossed paths with operatives from the CIA, the KGB, China’s Ministry of State Security, and Indian agencies multiple times in my life. In almost every case, their approach has been formulaic, their assumptions outdated, and their grasp of social context shallow. My responses to them have been equally blunt, sometimes deliberately irreverent. Respect must be earned through competence, not demanded through authority.
The larger problem is institutional. No government activity in India—outside the military—is rooted in rigorous training that integrates real-life exposure, cultural immersion, and ground-level understanding. The armed forces remain the sole exception because they cannot afford fantasy. War punishes incompetence swiftly and without ceremony. Civilian intelligence, insulated from such consequences, continues to operate within a colonial-era mindset dressed up in post-independence rhetoric.
Yet there is room for cautious optimism. Leadership matters. Vision matters. India today is led by a Prime Minister who understands power not merely as administrative control but as strategic capability. Narendra Modi has demonstrated an instinctive grasp of institutional reform, an impatience with stagnation, and the political courage to challenge entrenched bureaucracies. Whether this vision will translate into a genuine overhaul of India’s intelligence culture remains to be seen.
For that to happen, intelligence must be reimagined not as a clerical extension of policing but as a multidisciplinary profession—drawing from anthropology, economics, psychology, history, media studies, and technology. It must reward insight over obedience, imagination over hierarchy, and understanding over surveillance. Until then, India’s intelligence agencies will remain what they too often are today: predictable observers in an unpredictable world. And predictability, in the business of intelligence, is the greatest vulnerability of all.
