The United Progressive Alliance government has been in office for more than 100 days. The prime minister has lamented that “We are living in abnormal times” and it is difficult to disagree with him. The National Security Council was established by the NDA government to enable the cabinet to improve national security management. The Congress party in its election manifesto assured that it would make the NSC a professional and effective institution. It is, therefore, appropriate to review how the NSC has fared under the UPA government after three months of functioning.There is a full-time national security adviser who is not saddled with the additional burden of functioning as principal secretary to the prime minister. In addition, there is also a special adviser to the prime minister on security and intelligence. This NSC of the UPA government has held one meeting, unlike the NSC of the NDA government and it dealt with the security situation in the Northeast. While neither the prime minister nor the new national security adviser has spoken about the functioning of the NSC under the UPA government the special adviser on security and intelligence, M.K. Narayanan, has given an interview to this paper in which he outlined how this NSC under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will function. He has very correctly distinguished between the functions of the NSC and the CCS — the former is a deliberative body while the CCS is an action-taking body. He added “This government has just come in and the NSC hasn’t been able to find its feet yet. But the government will take time.’’Explaining further the difference in the functioning of CCS and NSC Narayanan said, “Take energy for instance. Suppose India’s energy reserves get substantially depleted and we have to fight a war. What would you do? This is not something that the CCS will look at. Its secretariat needs some upgradation which has not happened in the past. Maybe some consultants and thinkers who can handle the issues like this will have to come in.”This interview highlights that the thinking on the NSC’s role and functioning is on the right lines. However it is not clear why it is taking time to commission the NSC to function in an optimal way. If that is not done quickly there is every risk of the NSC getting infected by Parkinson’s syndrome. The reference here is to the rule formulated by Northcote Parkinson — that work expands to fill the time available to the bureaucrats. If the NSC is not structured and made to undertake the right functions there are risks of the NSA’s time being occupied by functions which he should not be handling. For instance the last NSA spent a lot of time in handling routine tasks that should have been left to the foreign minister and foreign office bureaucracy. Based on precedents, the present NSA too may be loaded with work that would be at the cost of work to which he should give priority as NSA. Bureaucracies have a tendency to get into grooves and fall into a routine. The challenge here is to break with such complacency.The prime minister has had a long career as a professional economist. He has, therefore, emphasised in his speech on the JRD Tata Centenary the need for setting up a committee on infrastructure. He proposes to monitor it quarterly. The committee will identify bottlenecks in the implementation of policy, guiding the ministries to speed up the implementation of projects and generating ideas for their consideration. In other words, he wants to manage more efficiently the economic infrastructure to speed up development and ensure the country’s high economic growth.The NSC is intended to function in a similar way in the field of national security management. Its role is to anticipate the bottlenecks and problems in the area of national security, speed up the projects related to national security management and, above all, generate ideas. The prime minister is reinventing the Planning Commission to function as the executive arm of the committee on infrastructure. He himself has been deputy chairman of the Planning Commission. Obviously the Planning Commission did not function or was not allowed to function in the way he envisages its role now to speed up the country’s infrastructure development.The NSC was intended to be modelled on what he has now envisaged for the committee for infrastructure, with respect to national security. It has to generate ideas, monitor implementation and remove bottlenecks. The prime minister is well aware why the Planning Commission did not fulfil the role assigned to it when it was originally formulated. In the case of economic planning, after the first 15 years the private sector had a major role and that was sought to be curbed. In national security planning too, the synergisation of the private and public sectors have to be thought through carefully. Even a beginning in this direction is yet to be made.The prime minister emphasised in his Tata memorial talk the need to adjust ourselves to inevitable globalisation. That applies not only to the economic field but to national security as well. Our elite is still obsessed with Cold War thinking, addicted to third worldism and is still unfamiliar with revolutionary changes taking place in the international balance of power and influence.It is time the NSC started to implement the right ideas it has already spelt out. The more it delays launching on its effective role, the more real are the dangers of its ending up as a routine department of coordination among ministries relevant to national security. The ideas the prime minister has spelt out to speed up infrastructure management must be applied to the role and functioning of the NSC as well.
