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.

Thirty pieces of silver

 

There was a fairly long period, three and a half years to be precise, when I thought I was the most unpopular person on the planet. This was when I headed Bureau of Civil Aviation Security (BCAS), the attached office which acts as the security regulator for all matters aviation across the 100 odd airports, seven domestic and 11 international airlines, numerous ground handling agents and caterers, even more numerous concessionaires, the access control agencies and so on, operating in India. 

What happened was this. I thought my job was to protect lives and civil aviation assets against unlawful interference by criminals and terrorists. All the other stakeholders thought my job was to protect them and their vested interests. They were merrily going about playing havoc with the rules and regulations and I went about merrily playing havoc with their machinations. I was astounded by how much and how routinely most rules were being transgressed. Every time I rejected an application or took action against a violator, the matter went on appeal to higher authorities and each time, before the hearing, the authorities would ask how big and how influential the appellant was. When I tried telling them that, for me, all applicants were equal and that I didn’t regulate by size or influence, I was laughed out of court. It became so that a particular Secretary and I developed serious religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn’t agree. One day, he told me he would throw me out. I politely told him he probably had that power but as long as I was holding the post, I would do my best by my mandate.

 

We were chugging along in mutual hostility when the guys at one particular airport thought that they could buy out everyone and everything for thirty pieces of silver. While constructing their airport they had violated the security regulations left, right and centre and three of these violations had considerable potential for serious harm. My organisation had objected to these shenanigans right at the design stage, again at the start of construction and, yet again, shortly after construction started but the airport just went ahead. In one of the inspections, when my DIG raised objections with their engineer, the latter’s boss shouted at the engineer, “Don’t bother about these security types; when the PM will inaugurate the airport, all these guys will be standing in a queue, clapping.” My motto having been, “Whatever it is, I’m against it,” there couldn’t have been a more motivating piece of dialogue for me to lay down the law, consequences be damned.

 

When the time came for the crucial meeting for the final decisions, the outcomes were pre-determined and everything was set for just a few nods around the table. Just as I was leaving the waiting room to go into the conference hall for the meeting, I received a call from the dak master of the Minister, “Dash sahab, aap zaraa positive ho jaaiye …” In the meeting, the airport owners walked in floating on air and looking down upon all of us from on high. For them, it was just a boring formality to be gone through. I didn’t raise any objections, I didn’t scream or shout. I just pointed out that such and such rules were violated; the objections were communicated in writing thrice; and, I shall not be granting the security permission. Also, that if I was overruled, I shall seek legal opinion and appeal against such overruling. All hell broke loose. The meeting concluded at 5.30 PM and I left. Next morning, my DIG told me that as he was waiting for the lift shortly after, he was accosted by some very high Ministry officials and there was a heated and astounded discussion as to how BCAS, an organisation under the command and control of the Ministry of Civil Aviation could take a stand opposite to the Ministry’s stand. And, the discussion lasted till 8.30 PM (three hours!), all outside that lift door. Later, the airport claimed that due to my “pig-headedness” and the resultant delay, the cost overrun of the project amounted to Rs. 1,100 crores.

 

The Minister and the Secretary were at loggerheads over everything and looked at each single issue in opposite directions. However, things came to a head for me when their great minds found a meeting ground on one decision –  that I must go if the industry, the country and, in fact, the entire cosmos were to be saved. Normally, political will (of corruption) comes up against bureaucratic won’t. In this case, not only had political will come up against bureaucratic won’t, (higher) bureaucracy will had come up against (junior) bureaucracy won’t!! So, quietly, very quietly, the Secretary wrote to the concerned authorities that I should be repatriated back to my cadre. I believe, what he wrote, in effect, was that, single-handed, I had brought the entire civil aviation industry in the country to a standstill. All this, for just sticking to the rules!!

 

I really didn’t know what to do. For me, it was just another assignment. Meanwhile, premature repatriation to the cadre usually has a stigma attached, with an implication that the officer couldn’t hack it at the Centre. I tried to meet a few people and as happens in such cases, I was passed along from one official to another in a game of pass-the-parcel. One day, I was just fed up and decided to take the fight to the guys who were actually in the wrong. I filed a case and laid out everything, chapter and verse, in my petition. And won, after about eight months. Meanwhile, the concerned Secretary had retired. The Court was so scathing and so detailed in its remarks that his successor opined that no useful purpose would be served by appealing against the Court’s orders.

 

The Minister lost his position shortly after. I completed my assignment and moved on to other pursuits. A few years later, out of the blue, I received a call from that same dak master of the Minister, now ex-Minister, “Dash sahab, aapke saath toh hum logon ka bahut jhamela hua, lekin, hamesha jab bhi aapas mein baat hoti hai, mein sabko bolta hun, aap hi jaise kuchh officer ke wazah se desh chal raha hai.” One hears the right song at the wrong time.