Opinion Guarding over growth

In April 2008,in a global forum held in Delhi,the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) hailed India’s rise as a unique one that does not evoking concern from other major powers. These powers had,in fact,taken the initiative to accommodate India in a modified international nonproliferation regime that allowed India to have its nuclear arsenal outside the framework of the Non-Proliferation Treaty and yet be eligible for civil nuclear cooperation. The difference in the international community’s perception of Chinese and Indian ascendance is striking. While China’s assertion of its intention to rise peacefully does not command much credibility,there are no reservations about India rising peacefully — mainly because India is already an established democracy and there is no past precedent of a democracy being aggressive towards another democracy. This difference in perception is reflected in the offer of all major democracies to sell their sophisticated military equipment to India while only Russia supplies military hardware to China. Even in that case,there is a qualitative difference between the Indo-Russian and Sino-Russian arms supply relationships,in India’s favour. In a nuclearised and globalised world,a war among major powers is hardly likely. Therefore India’s rise can be considered to be under favourable circumstances so far as its relationship with major democracies are concerned,the dominant forces in our world.

Unfortunately there is a flip side to this picture. The threats and challenges to this great Indian experiment of building the largest democratic industrial and modern state come from religious and left extremist terrorism,ethnic sessionism rooted in tribalism,failing states in our neighbourhood,organised crime,narcotics,weapons of mass destruction and the reservations of a non-democratic China on India’s alignment with democracies. China has preferred the harmonisation of the society over democracy as its core value and considers democracy a challenge to the fulfillment of its aspirations. All these threats and challenges have to be countered and managed effectively in the next three decades,if India is to emerge as the unique achievement in the human history. This is the problem of national security that faces the Indian political leadership.

One wonders whether our political class as a whole has an understanding of this national security problem in all its complexity and magnitude. While different aspects and facets of these multiple threats have to be dealt with by different agencies and instrumentalities of different ministries the interaction,interconnectivity and synergising among these challenges ,the short,medium and long term materialisation of these threats and challenges,the overall country-wide plans to deal with them,resource allocation and capability development cannot be handled optimally by individual ministries. The prime minister is responsible for ensuring that India progresses steadily towards the goal it has set for itself and the four ministers — for home,defence,external affairs and finance — form a cohesive team under his leadership to deal with these threats and challenges. This is what the National Security Council and national security management

are about.

There is better understanding about the Indian security management problem outside India than within the country. Rand Corporation and the New York police department were drawing lessons from the 26/11 attack quicker than the Indian agencies. A Singapore seminar focuses attention on the inadequacy of the study of the discipline of international studies if India were to play its due role. An American analyst comes out with a study that India lacks the software to play a role as a major actor in the light of inadequate development of think-tanks. Goldman Sachs comes out with its projections of economic futures of nations. The US National Intelligence Council publishes its long-range forecast about Indian growth. The NDA government abolished the Joint Intelligence Committee on setting up the NSC. In the US there are revolving doors between government national security establishments,think-tanks and universities. In India,there is a paucity of qualified personnel to staff even the few posts in the NSC secretariat. Our intelligence agencies are not encouraged to develop capabilities to develop assessments. Mostly they do situation reports. This is mainly because the political class is mostly focussed on the present. Those who do not focus on the future can never be ready to meet developing threats. This has been our history.

Therefore the job of the NSA is not to be in the nuclear command chain,nor to be a super-czar of intelligence or exercise any executive function. His job is to organise and coordinate national security management at the highest level as the principal civilian adviser of the prime minister,in his role as the national security manager and as the secretary of the five member NSC — which should not function as a mere sanctioning body of proposals and schemes submitted by the ministries but as a think tank on national security and as a forward planner. The council should issue directives to the ministries on formulation of policies and specific plans to meet challenges and contingencies. The council will not be able to play such a role unless it is given regular fortnightly intelligence briefings. The nstitutionalisation of intelligence briefing and follow-up discussions will sensitise the five members of NSC to issues of national security and will have a tonic effect on the entire process of intelligence collection,compilation,analysis and assessment. The new NSA should make a new beginning. He should start addressing the problem of national security management and not waste his time on distracting executive responsibilities,which could be looked after by others. His job is a daunting one.

The writer is a senior defence analyst