Top-level se­cu­rity pro­to­cols in In­dia are not re­ally the stuff of pub­lic dis­course, and ex­cept for a hand­ful of peo­ple and vet­eran jour­nal­ists who have fre­quently trav­elled with suc­ces­sive prime min­is­ters, hardly any­one un­der­stands the in­tri­ca­cies of se­cu­rity, blue book pro­to­cols or what fol­lows in the wake of a breach.

Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mod­i’s cav­al­cade ran into a farm­ers’ protest on a fly­over in Pun­jab, and the pre­mier or his se­cu­rity de­tail opted to wait for a good 20 min­utes be­fore tak­ing a call to re­turn to the near­est air­base and not ad­dress the rally at Fer­ozepur, which in any case seemed to be noth­ing more than a huge flop show.

What fol­lowed was a hy­per­bole-rid­den de­bate, al­le­ga­tions, and brouhaha over the breach in prime min­is­ter’s se­cu­rity. It was, in turn, fol­lowed by vis­its of teams of in­ves­ti­ga­tors, tailed by tele­vi­sion cam­era crews, as they ob­served the ex­act spot and charted the route that the prime min­is­ter had taken.

Most In­dian news chan­nels and me­dia houses failed to ed­u­cate the pub­lic that any breach in the se­cu­rity of the prime min­is­ter is not in­ves­ti­gated in such a pub­lic man­ner. If and when a se­cu­rity breach hap­pens, it will be in­ves­ti­gated in the most se­cre­tive ways, and con­se­quences will fol­low, but no noise will be made. It is in the very na­ture of the se­cu­rity pro­to­cols.

You do not ad­ver­tise a se­cu­rity breach, as it only gives ideas to rogue el­e­ments. 

The se­cu­rity of the coun­try’s top po­lit­i­cal leader is para­mount in any na­tion-state. When a stu­dent pi­lot, fly­ing a ma­chine as harm­less as a small Cessna 150 vi­o­lated air­space re­stric­tions, it prompted mass evac­u­a­tions through­out the White House and the US Capi­tol. Two F-16 fighter jets and a Black Hawk he­li­copter took upon the plane and made it to force-land at a small air­port nearby. 

On No­vem­ber 26, 2019, a small air­craft in­truded in the re­stricted air­space over the White House. Pro­to­cols re­quired that the White House was placed on a lock­down for 30 min­utes and fighter jets were scram­bled be­fore it was de­ter­mined that the air­craft was not hos­tile. 

Se­cu­rity breaches are taken far too se­ri­ously and are not dis­cussed thread­bare in the na­tional me­dia. In­ves­ti­ga­tions into se­cu­rity breaches never make it to the news­pa­pers, and steps are taken to en­sure it does not hap­pen again never make head­lines.

Such se­crecy is part of the se­cu­rity. Dis­cus­sion in pub­lic is by it­self a se­cu­rity breach. You can be sure that the day a se­ri­ous se­cu­rity breach hap­pens, the pub­lic won’t even get to know about it. 

Un­for­tu­nately, the mat­ter of Mod­i’s se­cu­rity breach in Fer­ozepur has been politi­cised by none other than the prime min­is­ter, and later, equally, by Pun­jab’s politi­cians of every party and hue, with for­mer CM Amarinder Singh ac­tu­ally de­mand­ing the dis­missal of the elected gov­ern­ment and im­po­si­tion of cen­tral rule in the state.

As for­mer CBI Di­rec­tor, late Jogin­der Singh wrote in his book, ‘In­dia, Democ­racy and Dis­ap­point­ments,’ “On a num­ber of oc­ca­sions of breach of se­cu­rity guide­lines, po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions have out­weighed all other con­sid­er­a­tions…(S)ecu­rity is a two play­ers’ game – be­tween the pro­tec­tor and the pro­tectee. It also in­volves ac­cept­ing le­gal lim­i­ta­tions, for­mal and in­for­mal.”

Now, what we do not, and might never, know is whether it was the prime min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to go by road, and thus al­low more time to his party lead­ers to man­age the some­what re­spectable crowd and whether the Mi17 chop­per re­ally could­n’t fly in that rain. So far, no one has come for­ward to say it was a very in­tel­li­gent thing to not fly and take the ter­res­trial route in­stead.

The fact is that the se­cu­rity per­son­nel are em­ploy­ees of the po­lit­i­cal mas­ter and, at best, can merely make po­lite re­quests. It is a hang­over of our colo­nial past that the se­cu­rity guy can­not over­rule his po­lit­i­cal mas­ter. 

Late Jogin­der Singh writes: “As In­spec­tor Gen­eral of Po­lice, I had to once take away the key of the car of a Union Min­is­ter to pre­vent him from go­ing and meet­ing ter­ror­ists in Sri­na­gar in the 1990s. But af­ter I went away, I learnt next day that he had got the ter­ror­ist’s car to go with them.” (p. 310)

He also wrote about how the role of the SPG has su­per­seded that of the state forces.

The fact is that the se­cu­rity per­son­nel are em­ploy­ees of the po­lit­i­cal mas­ter and, at best, can merely make po­lite re­quests. It is a hang­over of our colo­nial past that the se­cu­rity guy can­not over­rule his po­lit­i­cal mas­ter. 

The fact is that Naren­dra Modi is the prime min­is­ter of a coun­try of 140 crore peo­ple with the world’s sixth-largest econ­omy, a GDP ap­proach­ing 3 tril­lion US dol­lars, an army of 1.5 mil­lion and the third-largest de­fence bud­get in the world. He has an es­ti­mated 160 nu­clear war­heads at his com­mand, and mis­siles like Agni, Prithvi, Brah­mos and AWACS killer mis­siles. Also, he car­ries the nu­clear codes.

By what stretch of imag­i­na­tion can any­one ever think that his life will not be in dan­ger every sin­gle mo­ment of his life?

So when a prime min­is­ter tells you that his life was in dan­ger and “Main Zinda Bach Kar Bathinda Air­port Laut Aaya”, be clear that he is not talk­ing about any se­cu­rity breach. He is ad­dressed a rally from the Bathinda air­base in a man­ner so charis­matic that you for­got the deaf­en­ing si­lence that fell upon 70,000 red va­cant plas­tic chairs 150 kms away that had braved the rain for hours and were made to un­dergo tor­ture. (How else do you de­scribe the speech of Amarinder Singh who has been se­ri­ously re­search­ing the larger se­cu­rity breach – the drones leav­ing be­hind lunch boxes as speech ma­te­r­ial specif­i­cally for him?) 

The prime min­is­ter is a re­mark­able or­a­tor: he brought down the sky with a sin­gle roar whis­pered into the ears of Pun­jab’s “Khaz­ana Khali Hai” fi­nance min­is­ter.

You can be sure that the fi­nance min­is­ter would not have said a word back to him. That job be­longs to politi­cians. Man­preet Badal is just a mun­shi.

WATCH VIDEO – “Daleel with SP Singh” — ‘Apne CM ko thanks kehna ki main zinda laut paaya.’ How’s this re­lated to the Pun­jab elec­tions and the new farm­ers’ party?

As for the se­cu­rity breach, please rest as­sured that it will be in­ves­ti­gated by the right peo­ple and due lessons will be learnt, ac­count­abil­ity will be fixed and con­se­quences will fol­low. Only the po­lit­i­cal part will make it to the head­lines; the real game will re­main un­der wraps.

That’s called se­cu­rity. Every­thing else that you will hear will be pol­i­tics.

The au­thor is a Chandi­garh-based se­nior jour­nal­ist, colum­nist and tele­vi­sion an­chor, with in­ter­ests span­ning pol­i­tics, aca­d­e­mics, arts, and yes, even trivia. He mod­er­ates the weekly TV show ‘Daleel with SP Singh’.