Wanted: PR Consultants for the Indian Government

The Indian bureaucracy and the police establishments should feature in case studies on "How to most effectively put both your feet into your mouth". Nowhere else in the world do we have investigating agencies sharing evidence and snippets on an ongoing investigation especially those pertaining to national security. The Indian police and government machinery is so eager to prove that they are not as incompetent as they are believed to be that they end up proving the charge to be correct. A proper approach would require the establishment to follow the classic JFK media policy: Minimum information with maximum politeness. Here, our officers are free not just to discuss crucial evidence on camera but also share their theories and future lines of investigation (and they have apparently been selected to the services through a rigorous examination system testing their intellect). While discussion of cases like the Arushi Talwar murder case botched up an investigation and helped murderers walk off scott-free, there is much more at stake when information related to concurrent operations and investigations involving national security are shared. The most recent case is the well publicized arrest and subsequent release of the RAW agent who had supplied SIM cards to the terrorist cells. It takes a lot of effort and risk to plant undercover agents in the field, after all, it is only through information gathered from covert intelligence sources that terror attacks can be prevented. But it takes only the stupidity of the Indian Police Force to blow up the cover, and that too on national television. Arresting an agent planted by your own intelligence unit can be circumstantial. But publicizing him as a terrorist in front of national and international media requires a really high level of dumbness that can only be achieved here. God save them, and us.