Research and Analysis Wing is India's external intelligence agency. Formed in September 1968 after the Sino-Indian War of 1962 and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, its primary function is collection of external intelligence, counter-terrorism and covert operations. In addition, it is also responsible for obtaining and analyzing information about foreign governments, corporations, and persons in order to advise Indian foreign policymakers. Until the creation of R&AW in September 1968, the Intelligence Bureau handled both internal and external intelligence.The R&AW has its headquarters on Lodhi Road in New Delhi.The Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), created in 1968, has assumed a significant status in the formulation of India's domestic and foreign policies, particularly the later. Working directly under the Prime Minister, it has over the years become an effective instrument of India's national power. In consonance with Kautilya's precepts, RAW's espionage doctrine is based on the principle of waging a continuous series of battles of intrigues and secret wars.
R&AW traces its origins to the post Sino-Indian war (October 20 - November 21, 1962) scenario where foreign intelligence failure led to the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) instructing the setting up of a dedicated foreign intelligence agency. Prior to its inception, intelligence collection was primarily the responsibility of the Intelligence Bureau (IB) which was created by the British. In 1933, sensing the political turmoil in the world which eventually led to the Second World War, the bureau's responsibilities were increased to include the collection of intelligence along India's borders. In 1947, after independence, Sanjeevi Pillai took over as the first Indian Director of IB. Having been depleted of trained manpower by the exit of the British, Pillai tried to run the bureau on MI5 lines. Although in 1949, Pillai organized a small foreign intelligence set-up, the inefficacy of it was proved by the Indian debacle in the Indo-China War of 1962, and the cry of 'not enough intelligence available', was taken up by the Indian Chief of Army Staff, General Jayanta Nath Chaudhury, after the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965.
Around the end of 1966 the concept of a separate foreign intelligence agency began to take concrete shape. In 1968, after Indira Gandhi had taken over, it was decided that a full-fledged second security service was needed. R. N. Kao, then a deputy director of the Intelligence Bureau, submitted a blueprint for the new agency. Kao was appointed as the chief of India's first foreign intelligence agency named as the Research and Analysis Wing or R&AW. The R&AW was given the responsibility for strategic external intelligence, human as well as technical, plus concurrent responsibility with the Directorate-General of Military Intelligence for tactical trans-border military intelligence up to a certain depth across the LOC and the international border.
As per convention, the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) under the Cabinet Secretariat is responsible for co-ordinating and analyzing intelligence activities between R&AW, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). In practice, however, the effectiveness of the JIC has been varied. With the establishment of the National Security Council in 1999, the role of the JIC has been merged with the NSC. R&AW's legal status is unusual; it is not an "Agency" but a "Wing" of the Cabinet Secretariat. Hence R&AW is not answerable to Parliament on any issue. Because of this, R&AW has been kept out of reach of the Right to Information Act
R&AW started as a wing of the main Intelligence Bureau with 250 employees and an annual budget of Rs 2 crore (roughly $450,000). In the early seventies, its annual budget had risen to Rs 30 crores while its personnel numbered several thousand. In 1971, Kao had persuaded the government to set up the Aviation Research Centre (ARC). The ARC's job was aerial reconnaissance.It replaced the Indian Air Force's old reconnaissance aircraft and by the mid-70s, R&AW, through the ARC, had high quality aerial pictures of the installations along the Chinese and Pakistani borders. Presently the budget of R&AW hovers around $150 million
There are four R&AW Aviation Research Centre operating bases:at Charbatia in Cuttack; at Chakrata on the Uttarakhand-Himachal Pradesh border, also the headquarters of the elite Special Frontier Force; Dum Duma near Tinsukia in Assam; and at the Palam domestic airport in Delhi It is also alleged that Farkhor Air Base, the only Indian military base situated in a foreign country, at Farkhor/Ayni in Tajikistan,is also another base station of ARC. By 1976, Kao became responsible for security, reporting directly to the Prime Minister. His rise paralleled R&AW's rise to prominence. R&AW agents operated in virtually every major embassy and high commission. ARC has positioned itself to be one of the foremost agencies in aerial surveillance. Its assets of fixed-wing transport and light aircraft like Russian IL-76s and Antonov An-32s and General Dynamics Gulfstream III/SRA-1s and upgraded Gulfstream IV/SRA-4 jets of the US and helicopter fleet comprising Russian MI-8s and a mix of locally built Cheetahs (locally modified French Alouette IIs) and Chetak's (Alouette IIIs), many of which are used to transport Special Frontier Force (SFF) commandos from their base at Chakrata, 250 km north of New Delhi, at the behest of R&AW operatives or from the Intelligence Bureau are tasked with gathering information via airborne signal intelligence (SIGINT) operations and photo reconnaissance flights along its northern and eastern frontiers.
The Government of India has added another intelligence agency which is dedicated to collection of technical intelligence ( TECHINT ). India's new hi-tech spying agency, the National Technical Facilities Organisation (NTFO), also known as National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO) is believed to be functioning under R&AW, although it remains autonomous to some degree. While the exact nature of the operations conducted by NTFO are classified, it is believed that it deals with research on imagery and communications using various platforms.