Highly confidential, sky-blue manual guided top officials during the conflict

THE CONCEPT OF THE WAR BOOK GOES BACK TO COLONIAL TIMES BUT A NEW EDITION IS BROUGHT OUT EVERY 15 YRS OR SO

- Sunetra Choudhury

A blue-coloured, limited-edition government manual of over 200 pages, which is not in the public domain, has served as a go-to handbook for key bureaucrats across the country during the past week, as it outlined the response and functions of various arms of government during an armed conflict.

The Union War Book 2010 is the original limited edition, so secretive that the ministry of defence, ministry of home affairs and the cabinet secretariat officials who helped prepare it and update it annually can't tell you who its rightful keepers are but HT learns that there is one copy with each state chief secretary apart from the Union ministries involved. And from fire drills to evacuations and sirens, the entire emergency response to-do list is dictated by this book lying on their desks.