Overview

 

India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) is the country’s premier intelligence agency. Established to satisfy the need for increased intelligence that was identified during the 1962 Sino-Indian Border War and during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965, RAW was created in 1968 to handle India’s external intelligence affairs.

 

Currently, RAW operates under the Prime Minister's Office, and was intentionally established as a “wing” versus an “agency” in order to bypass agency reporting requirements to Parliament’s Right to Information Act. Accordingly, it is hard to find detailed information about the organization.

 

Since its inception, RAW is credited with providing intelligence support to many significant operations on foreign soil. However, as with all of India’s intelligence organizations, RAW is not without flaws. RAW is known for not working in cooperation with the Intelligence Bureau or other Indian intelligence agencies. This lack of cooperation and coordination has led to multiple inquiries into RAW’s true analytic capabilities and their overall relevance to the protection of Indian interests.