Operation Zero Tolerance

 

Not all of the experience at Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) was gloom and doom and a season of darkness; it ended with a glimmer of spring and light and hopeful optimism too. 

At the beginning of my tenure there, I thought it was a good idea to set one’s own house in order. There was rank indiscipline pervading the organisation. The guy who was in charge of administration and enforcing discipline used to disappear for a three-hour lunch on the pretext of a "sacrosanct" football match. A particular officer on deputation as a technical expert pocketed a neat one crore by changing just one word in a technical specification. Another chap was arranging for arbitrary promotions regardless of seniority. When I started scything through these, I became public enemy no. 1 for the subordinate staff in my organisation.

 

I headed a committee to look into a matter for which there was massive media coverage and almost daily Parliamentary questions. Suddenly, a day after the Committee finalised its report with unanimous agreement, one of the members changed his mind and asked me (DIRECTED ME!) to change the report. I told him that everything had been agreed upon unanimously after threadbare discussions and if he had a change of heart, he could enter a dissent note. He refused to sign, refused to submit a dissent note either, and practically threatened.  I recorded his refusal to sign/dissent and submitted the report. This led to my being unpopular with some of the stakeholders.

 

In India, many suffer from the syndrome of “Tu jaanta nahi main kaun hoon?” There were of course the public representatives who sought all-airport, all-area access which I denied so I became unpopular with parts of the political class. I also found that, completely quietly, and without any permission, one airport had instituted a practice of separate queue for security checking of business class and first-class passengers, putting additional strain on the already-stretched security resources. I directed this to be stopped and within minutes, I was summoned by the authorities to explain. I informed that there was nothing to explain, there was no separate queue for security of any class of passengers in any other airport either in India or anywhere in the world, everyone paid Rs. 130 per ticket for security and everyone would be treated equal. Luckily, the then Secretary was convinced. When they demanded that the VIPs could not stand in the same queue as “commoners,” the Secretary blithely informed them that as per the Blue Book, there were only three VIPs, the honourable President of India, the honourable Vice President of India and the honourable Prime Minister of India. This, of course, rubbed the “Tu jaanta nahi …” crowd the wrong way.

 

Aviation is a globally integrated system. The same aeroplane flies from point A in country X to points B, C, D in the same country and point E in country Y and point F, G in country Z. The passengers, cargo and the flight crew hop from aeroplane to aeroplane and from country to country. The security at any point of the aviation system affects the whole civil aviation system and a security lapse at one airport can jeopardise civil aviation operation at a place or in an entity thousands of kilometres half way across the globe. International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) under the United Nations lays down the aviation security architecture for all the countries and enforces them through a very rigorous four-yearly audit of the member countries. This audit is very comprehensive and fairly mathematical. In the first round, the auditors seek answers to around 1500 questions, i.e., 1500 aspects of security are examined, ranging from legislation through manpower, training, quality control, enforcement, almost everything. That is the easy part. The difficult part comes in the second round when they raise follow-up queries on around 200 aspects on which they are not satisfied in the first round. After the queries are answered, they tote up the total number of queries where the answers and their observations are satisfactory and give that as the score as a percentage of the 1500 or so aspects that were examined. The scary part is, in case they flag any “Significant Security Concern (SSC),” aircrafts from other countries stop flying into India and flights ex-India stop getting accepted by other countries.

 

An ICAO audit was due. The global average score on ICAO audit was 64 %. In the previous audit, India had scored 71 %. I hoped to improve it but, at the same time, I desperately tried to avoid having any Significant Security Concern raised - any regulator’s ultimate nightmare. Bit by painful bit, I set about plugging as many loopholes as I could. In the process, I became increasingly unpopular and the Chinese whispers started. ‘Negative type,’ ‘Sanki,’ ‘Vile,’ ‘Mechanical’ ‘Poisonous,’ ‘Rotten’ … are some of the words and phrases freely bandied about me behind my back. I didn’t like it but focused on my own “Operation Zero Tolerance” and kept on getting more and more unpopular – amongst my own organisation colleagues, the Ministry, the politicians, the “Tu jaanta nahi …” crowd, almost all the stakeholders except the other security establishments. 

Then came the audit. I was petrified. At the completion of the ICAO audit, all of us at BCAS experienced the feeling of the sugarcane strips coming through those roadside juice extractor machines for the umpteenth time. It takes about a month for the audit results to arrive. In my entire career, that was probably the most nerve-wracking period for me. I was praying fervently to avoid any SSC. When the results came, I was stunned. Not only was there no SSC, not only had we exceeded the previous 71 %, we had achieved a near-perfect 99.57 %, thus catapulting the Indian aviation security to global leadership, along with Israel and Switzerland, far, far ahead of advanced countries like the USA. Many countries whose ICAO audits were due subsequently sent their officers to India to be trained by us on how to prepare for and face an ICAO audit. ICAO itself organised an international seminar in Delhi for global experts for presentation by us. One of the major reasons the new Anti Hijacking Act got passed in the Parliament without a hitch was the honourable Minister quoting the audit results extensively and with gusto. All those days of unpopularity, all those days of internecine battles with the stakeholders, the Ministry, some members of the political establishment and on and on were suddenly worth it.

This coincided with completion of my assignment with BCAS. In the last Raising Day of BCAS that I attended and held, I basked one last time looking at the sea of upturned faces of the officials and stakeholders gathered there and thanked them. Then I walked away, and I did not look back. I had written my troubles in the sand. And the tide was coming in.