Free The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru Page B

process of appointing an NSA had begun immediately after the nuclear tests in 1998, when a committee set up by Vajpayee on revamping India’s national security management to meet the needs of the times, had recommended a National Security Council with a dedicated secretariat, a Strategic Policy Group and an NSAB. The NSC Secretariat (NSCS) would be headed by an NSA.
    Subrahmanyam, who had been consulted by this committee before it wrote its report, imagined that the NSC would be something like the Planning Commission, a group of experts heading various sections, and that the NSA would be a full-time functionary, like the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. Since the Planning Commission sits at a distance from the PMO, in Yojana Bhavan, he imagined the NSA and the NSCS would similarly be located outside the PMO.
    However, while accepting the substance of the committee’s report, Vajpayee chose to name his principal secretary, Brajesh Mishra, as NSA. The NSCS was placed in the charge of a deputy NSA whose office was located outside the PMO, in the nearby Sardar Patel Bhavan. Subrahmanyam did not like the idea of Brajesh Mishra keeping both positions. He felt that since the principal secretary, to the PM would be under 24x7 pressure to address day-to-day challenges, the urgent task of improving India’s national security management would end up being neglected.
    Many years later, after watching the experience of UPA-1, Subrahmanyam apparently developed second thoughts about the wisdom of separating the two positions. At a private dinner after the First K. Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture, in January 2012, Mishra told a few friends, including the current NSA, Shivshankar Menon, and myself, that Subrahmanyam had told him that he erred in recommending the separation of the offices of the NSA and principal secretary to the PM, because he realized the PM could not take a holistic and politically informed view of national security with his two key aides functioning in non-intersecting silos.
    In June 2004, however, Dr Singh not just accepted Subrahmanyam’s advice to separate the posts of principal secretary and the NSA, but went a step further, by dividing up the NSA’s beat, with foreign affairs, defence and nuclear strategy allotted to Mani Dixit and internal security to Narayanan. However, instead of then asking the NSA and SA to sit in Sardar Patel Bhavan, home of the NSCS, he chose to locate them within the premises of the PMO.
    For the first few weeks of its existence, the Manmohan Singh PMO just did not get along. The NSA wanted all files relating to the external affairs, home and defence ministries to go through him to the PM. This would, for the first time, seriously abridge the principal secretary’s role in decision-making and, more vitally, appointments pertaining to these ministries. Narayanan, even though he lived in Chennai and flew down to Delhi for a few days every week, then got into the act and demanded that he should be looking at files pertaining to the home ministry and the internal security agencies.
    The media got wind of this internal turf war, with a senior journalist being briefed by Brajesh Mishra, who in turn had heard of it from his subordinates who were still in the PMO and were in touch with him. It was then decided that an office order would be issued clarifying the individual responsibilities of Nair, Dixit and Narayanan. This was then made public.
    Matters did not rest there. Over the next few weeks, media reports appeared suggesting there was a problem of turf between the PM’s advisers and his senior Cabinet ministers, the ministers for external affairs and home, Natwar Singh and Shivraj Patil. They had sought a clarification from the PM about what role Mani and Narayanan would play and whether they would interfere in the work of the home and external affairs ministries.
    One day, Natwar Singh, the foreign minister, called me to his room in South Block and unburdened himself of his