Intelligence Failures of India
India never learns. Its intelligence services were a big failure during the Chinese invasion of India in 1962. The head honchos of intelligence gave a bad judgement call on Chinese intent to PM Nehru. That resulted in his famous call to a weak Army “Clear the Chinese from Indian Territory”. We know the results of that bad judgement call.
Again in 1965; still smarting under the Chinese beating of India, that the Indian intelligence honchos could not determine the true intent of the Pakistani invasion of Raan of Kutch. Ayub Khan’s real intent was to grab Kashmir from India by choking the Kashmir supply line by reaching Jammu and cutting off Kashmir and 80,000 Indian troops at LOC and LAC. The day was saved by the brave Indian troops and Pakistani stupidity for halting to regroup on September 3, 1965 at the bridgehead of Tawi River. IAF blew up their advance tanks and prevented further advances. India replied by sending an army towards Lahore to relieve the pressure on Jammu.
In 1999, the re-organized Indian intelligence was fooled again when Pakistani staged a major tactical victory by capturing the heights in Kargil. The resulting war to expel the Pakistanis required a huge military effort and good offices of US President Clinton. It was lucky that by then India had built up a military muscle to expel them, which the Pakistanis did not have. India had no intelligence of this Pakistani action.
Well, in 2020 the Chinese staged a Pakistani stylistic tactical advance where their clever pretense of exercise brought their troops to the barren heights of LAC. They did beat up Indian troops in one area, but they lost a bunch of their own. In the process, they shifted the LAC as per their plan, about 7-8 miles, but retreated at a few places when their supply line was threatened. As it stands today, they do not wish to retreat from other areas and give India a victory. Our intelligence could never guess it right that the exercise they are staging in 2020 is in fact an invasion to capture the area. It is the will of iron and wrist of steel presented by the Indian troops knocked some sense into their heads. Now they are pin pricking elsewhere to stage a tactical surprise, but of no avail. Their intents are well known and remedy is to present them a fully loaded gun ready to fire.
These are published few examples where our intelligence fell short. Although, India spends about $4 billion on external and internal intelligence and data gathering, but we are still falling short. Had we known the true Chinese intent in 2020 then the LAC would be where, as it had been for several decades and expense of rushing troops would have been saved. The same is true about 1999 fight in Kargil. That sacrifice of the Indian soldiers to climb difficult heights would have been saved.
There are multiple ways the world gathers intelligence. They use multiple ways, including Human, electronic. Satellite, diplomatic, etc. Even if the raw intelligence is correct, yet its interpretation which matters. It would seem that our peacetime intelligence gathering and conclusions drawn are highly faulty.