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RAW recruits its officials according to the position of an individual. What does that mean? If you are at a good position in government you can be recruited for intelligence. How to join RAW? Your record works as your Resumè. That means at least graduation is compulsory to get a chance in RAW. What kind of position do you need so that they recognize you and recruit you? Grade A officers like Indian Foreign Service(IFS), Indian Police Service(IPS), etc. This does not mean selection in RAW only happens from these services. If your dream to work as a RAW agent this blog will help you thoroughly. We will cover literally everything in this article. From selection to retirement, the life of RAW agents. This article will also give insight on how they live among us, even meet you some time but we have no clue which one is a spy. How to join RAW?
How to join RAW?
They recruit candidates from government departments in India, Armed forces, Intelligence Agencies, Police Services, Administrative Services, etc. The eligibility criteria comprise educational qualification, age limit, experience, and other basic criteria. Both IB and RAW demands some tough criteria process for candidates to get an entry into it.
Educational:
How can I apply for RAW? An aspirant must graduate from a reputed organization or institute to apply for an Intelligence Officer post. In the case of RAW, willing candidates should possess good education from reputed universities. Sometimes it is necessary to have a command on one foreign language. Age should be below 56 and work experience should be more than 10+.
A tough process to get recruited into these two organizations includes a written examination followed by an interview. The Intelligence Bureau recruitment process requires candidates to appear for CGPE ( Combined Graduate Preliminary Exam) which is conducted by SSC (Staff Selection Commission) every year.
How to join RAW? To become a RAW agent, candidates should take Group A Civil Services exam under the Central Staffing Scheme. They have to clear all the stages of Civil Service Examination and qualified candidates are allowed to write the RAW examination. Though these are basic requirements according to your work experience, they will assign you a particular post in the organization.
What are the posts in RAW and how to join a particular post?
There is not enough data available about other posts but important officer level posts we mentioned below. How to join various RAW posts?
Director of RAW
Grade 1 officer example IPS officer. Officer must have a good record. Though this is not only the post from where the Director is appointed. There are many other ways they can appoint director.
Field Officer
If you are inspired by someone in RAW or in the movie you may have seen anyone doing spying activity etc, it’s highly likely you understand what kind of post is this. Yes, you got it right. But those are movies its real so the situation is completely different. We will discuss how is the life of RAW agent latter. We will also analyze various real short stories about these agents.
Techie, Analyst
No real danger in the job. But a huge responsibility. If you missed a bit of a thing in which you are good at. Not only you are doomed, but there can be other lives as well.
Specific fields
Field analysts cant do data analyst work. They recruit people based on expertise. We can never know who is recruited from where because we never know who exactly is recruited. They live among us. They are us. Maybe I am one of them, lol. We should not try to break there privacy because it’s for our own benefit. We hope you got the idea of how to join RAW
Top 15 things about RAW you don't know ?
A friend’s father work in RAW. We can’t divulge anything related to work because we also don’t know that. What we know that are some real facts that you may don’t know. Check it out. How to join RAW.
1.The best part of the selection procedure is you won’t even know that you are being interviewed to get in RAW and you would be communicated only in end about this when you get selected.
2.It snatches away the last bit of ego and pride left inside you. So you can’t become RAW agent like Salman Khan, Agent Vinod, lol. Lets be realistic here, you will deal with real people and avoid every possible fight to even single guy. Because it takes only a bullet in head for both.
3.As a RAW agent, You may be very powerful. But the only way you can use your power is for the benefit of your Country.
4.RAW is just a fictitious name and it’s called by some else name officially, we can’t divulge here on a public site.
5.If you wanna know a bit about how this organization work, watch Madras Cafe movie. This movie has a bit of insight into how RAW works.
6.Don’t get in R&AW if you want to be like Bond or Salman Khan. It’s like any other government job that is boring and monotonous with no excitement & very slow promotions.
7.Don’t allow your too much patriotism to control your mind because everything looks great when you are outside but the moment you will come inside such organization and know it’s dark secrets, functioning, employee treatment & no respect for hard work that time your patriotism will shatter into pieces & then you will realize that everyone in the world is here to get their work done. But that doesn’t mean you will not love your job, you were there to serve people…. and you can do it. This one is just our opinion.
8.They don’t report directly to the Secretary of R&AW as shown in some movies. They simply report to their reporting officer who further reports to his senior in a hierarchical order.
9.The salary of an agent of R&AW is average and not all get Government quarter.
10. In 1984, in a very important call to the Indian military, RAW informed that Pakistan’s operation ‘Ababeel’ was planning to capture the Saltoro ridge in Siachen. Thanks to the timely tip, the Indian army was able to launch operation ‘Meghdoot’, which forced the Pakistan army to retreat even before they could enter the territory.
11. Initially, RAW used to hire people only from IB (Intelligence Bureau), Indian police services, and Indian military or revenue departments. However, being recruited in the Research and Analysis Wing now is comparatively a lot simpler than before. But that only means they will approach you not you. They have even started picking up students from universities. One story was of Ravinder Kaushik, India’s biggest mole in Pakistan.
12.Under the Right To Information act, one simply can’t extract information from RAW. RAW is exempted from the RTI act.
13.Some major RAW assisted operations: Operation Smiling Buddha, Operation Leech, Operation Cactus, Operation Chanakya, Operation Khatua, ELINT operations in Himalyas, Operation Meghdoot, Kanishka Bombing case, Operation Kahuta, and there are many more that we can’t know.
14. Snatch Operations: For some time Raw is also involved in snatch operations. In the snatch operation, the officials of the RAW catch any suspect abroad and bring them to inquire at the unknown location of the country. This is done to avoid the long process of extradition. Akshay Kumar’s movie ‘Baby’ is a good example to understand snatch operations. In the last decade, Raw has completed 400 successful snatch operations in Nepal, Bangladesh, and other countries.
15.The budget of RAW remains classified. However, there are some unusual ways in which it is funded:
- 1. Indian Embassies in foreign countries have an unmarked component to support the Office of the local Station Chief.
- 2.Front Companies & Embedded Employees (Hotels, Tourism & Travel Companies/Agents, Banks & Financial Services, Newspaper/Media firms, Energy Companies, etc).
- 3.Political Parties’ funds in foreign countries.
- 4. Shell Companies- Funds are parked in foreign tax havens under the name of Shell Companies.
- 5.“Special Budgets” for honey trapping operations.
- 6.Commissions in military deals.
History of RAW(Research and Analysis Wing) of India?
Until 1968, the Intelligence Bureau (IB), which is responsible for India’s internal intelligence, also handled external intelligence. But after India’s miserable performance in a 1962 border war with China, the need for a separate external intelligence agency was clear.
During that conflict, “our intelligence failed to detect Chinese build-up for the attack,” writes Maj. Gen. VK Singh, a retired army officer who did a stint in RAW, in his 2007 book, India’s External Intelligence: Secrets of Research and Analysis Wing
As a result, India established a dedicated external intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing. Founded mainly to focus on China and Pakistan, over the last forty years the organization has expanded its mandate and is credited with greatly increasing India’s influence abroad.
Experts say RAW’s powers and its role in India’s foreign policy have varied under different prime ministers.
RAW’s first leader, Rameshwar Nath Kao, led the agency until he retired in 1977. Many experts, including officers who worked with him, credit Kao with RAW’s initial successes: India’s triumph in the 1971 war with Pakistan, and India’s covert assistance to the African National Congress’s anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa. “To a large extent, it was Kao who raised RAW to the level of India’s premier intelligence agency, with agents in virtually every major embassy and high commission,” writes Singh. But the organization has been criticized for its lack of coordination with domestic intelligence and security agencies, weak analytical capabilities, and complete lack of transparency.
Who was Ravindra Kaushik (The Black Tiger of India)? How he joined RAW?
One such spy was Ravindra Kaushik, an undercover RAW agent deployed in Pakistan until he was arrested and died while incarcerated.
Born on the 11th of April in 1952, Kaushik was just 23 when he first went undercover for the Indian intelligence agency. Kaushik is considered to be India’s greatest spy as he was able to penetrate through the ranks of the Pakistan army.
How he joined RAW? He was recruited by organization directly. He was sent to Pakistan with a new alias- Nabi Ahmed Shakir and all his records back home were destroyed. He then went on to complete his LLB from Karachi University, joined the Pakistani army and then became a commissioned officer. Eventually, he was promoted to the rank of a major. He is also reported to have married a girl named Amanat and become the father of a girl.
According to reports, he had passed on critical information to the Indian defense forces from 1979 to 1983. Because of this, he was conferred with the title of ‘The Black Tiger’ by the then PM, Indira Gandhi.
Inayat Masiha, a RAW agent was sent to meet him, but the Pakistani forces caught him and he blew Kaushik’s cover upon interrogation.
Sentenced to death in 1985 but the punishment was later changed to life imprisonment. He spent the next 18 years in Pakistani custody. He managed to send letters from Jail, one of these letters said: Is this the reward a person gets for sacrificing his life for India? In November 2001, ‘The Black Tiger’ succumbed to pulmonary tuberculosis and heart disease and died in the New Central Multan Jail. Since a year following his death, his family has been trying to get Indian to acknowledge the sacrifice he had made for his country.
RAW once defeated ISI at their own game
In Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, a Pakistan-sponsored terrorist organization, Al-Fatah organization launched their actions to liberate J&K from India ( They think this as liberation although J&K is officially part of India ).
*These facts are taken from brief answer by Promitha Mondal , a quora user. And we don’t claim this as our research and these facts can be wrong too.
Luckily 30+ members of Al-Fatah got arrested by J&K police with the help of intelligence agencies. RAW decided to infiltrate Qureshi into this organization as he was well aware of the terrain of POK.
But he was won over by the Pakistani intelligence, the ISI. There, he was given the training to hijack a plane by a former Pakistani pilot.
When he was sent back to India, the BSF arrested him and he cracked upon interrogation. The plan was to hijack the plane which would be piloted by Rajiv Gandhi, son of Mrs. Indira Gandhi then Prime Minister of India.
When this startling disclosure was reported to the head of BSF and RAW, India decided to beat Pakistan at their own game!
RAW and BSF persuaded Qureshi to work for them in order to save him from execution.
- According to the plan, Qureshi would hijack an Indian Airlines aircraft flying from Srinagar to Lahore. In return, he would demand the release of 36 members of the Al-Fatah who were in jail in India.
- A Fokker Friendship aircraft, Ganga, which was retired from Indian Airlines was inducted for this operation.
- The plane was hijacked and he was allowed a toy pistol and a fake grenade inside the plane.
- All India Radio soon made the broadcast of this hijack. The whole world, by now, was informed that the Pakistani government was behind this hijack.
- He demanded (as planned) the release of 36 Al-Fatah members in the custody of India, which India declined.
- Qureshi was given political asylum and hailed as a freedom fighter in Pakistan.
- Later the passengers of the plane came by road to India and the plane was burned by Pakistan.
The reason behind all this.
The Indian government banned all the flights of Pakistan flying over our territory and it exposed that Pakistani state openly and actively supporting terrorists.
The shortest air route between east and west Pakistan was from Indian Air Space. Any other air route without using India air space was at least 3 times longer and time/fuel consuming. Pakistan had to go around India, via Sri Lanka.
The hijacking greatly slowed down the arrival of Pakistani Army through air. This was a master stroke by RAW during the 1971 war for liberation of Bangladesh by India.
Checkout additional article: How to become IAS/IPS
Other famous articles about recruitment and How to join RAW.